


All the Shadows That I Walk In

by bitchcraft



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bottom Harry, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Girl Direction, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Dom/sub, Mutual Pining, Pain Kink, Top Louis, injury/accident flashbacks, not between Harry and Louis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:59:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 43,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6404023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitchcraft/pseuds/bitchcraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis (professional surfer and resident angsty bitch) meets Harry (ice cream server and occasional ray of sunshine). They become pals (cue unacknowledged sexual tension) amidst drama surrounding Louis returning to her surfing career after an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress  
> as of March 28, 2018  
> I'm working on some edits/revisions, and getting out the next chapter. I know it's been a Long Time since I updated but don't lose hope, I will finish this bitch off if it's the last thing I do. It may be a bumpy ride, folks, but it's definitely worth it.

“Weather’s actually good!” Niall comes through the door the only way she seems to know how, with lots of noise and enthusiasm. “Waves,” she adds, “are bloody effing magnificent.”

Louis looks up at Niall’s obscene grin and back down at the TV. “Cool.” she says.

Niall bounces over to the couch and sprawls across it, her head landing in Louis’ lap, “Please?” she wheedles, “Pretty please, Louis?”

“Niall, get your artificially blond head the fuck out of my crotch.” 

Niall’s grin widens. Who knew that was possible. Was it normal to have that many teeth? And so white? “You can’t mope forever. Come with me. The weather is flawless. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and you’ll complain about it all day and I’ll have to be totally unsympathetic because you fucking missed your flawless chance today.”

“Niall, The Voice is on.”

“Okay.” And just like that Niall leaps up and disappears out of Louis’ line of sight.

Stupid Irish woman. Louis wasn’t done demonstratively moping. Still, The Voice was on. 

And then Louis is being lifted out of her seat and dragged back towards the door. She yells and kicks out. “Oi! What the fuck?”

“Consider this,” says Niall’s gleeful voice, “an intervention.”

“I don’t want to be intervened!” Louis says, possibly with more drama than necessary. “What have I ever done to deserve this dismal fate?”

“Oh, shut up.” Niall seems to have finished bodily dragging Louis through the front door and now, as she deposits Louis’ body into the open car, it becomes clear what her plan is.

“You can’t just force me to go to the beach.” Louis says.

“Bloody watch me.” Niall runs around to the other side of the car and leaps in. “Besides,” she reasons, as she starts the car and pulls out of the driveway and Louis pretends she’s trying escape the car, mostly to prove a point, “If you get all out of shape and shitty…”

Louis sits up straight, “I’m not gonna to get out of shape and shitty.”

“When’s the last time you practiced?”

“Like, last week.” Okay, so she hadn’t really practiced, but she’d been on the beach, she’d considered it. Louis looks out the window.

As if she’s been victorious Niall says loudly, “I rest my case,” and she takes an abrupt left turn, pulling them into the parking lot. In the distance, as the engine turns off, Louis can hear the restless, pulsing sound of the sea. 

When she turns her head Niall is giving her an oddly searching, heartfelt look.

Louis grabs the door handle and pulls herself out of the car just for something to do. “Fuck off, mate.” she mutters, under her breath. Something occurs to her, she pokes her head through the window. “I don’t have any of my stuff. How can I practice?” 

She’d been rather pleased to realize this, not that she’d say so, she’s trying to appear as if she’s recovering wonderfully, so it’s with a certain sense of disappointment and impending doom that she finds herself down on the beach ten minutes later, the bag with her surfing gear piled at her feet. Niall had disappointingly had the foresight to pack it in between yelling at Louis about the flawless waves and dragging her bodily to the car.

Niall gives Louis that look again. “Louis, look, you don’t… you don’t have to jump right into this, but, like, you keep saying this is your year to go for the Championship, and everyone is waiting for you to, and you don’t have to obviously, but if you want to, if you really, honestly, actually want to, you have to start preparing soon.”

Louis stares out at the sea. Niall was right, the waves today are perfect, pale blue, arcing up, up, up and flinging themselves down in a circle to crash into the ocean in a reckless, incendiary spray of white. The sun is shining, just overhead, burning down hot enough to scorch the sand. It would feel glorious on her skin, just out of the cool salt water. The light breeze tousles Louis’ fringe across her forehead. There’s a part of Louis that’s itching to get out there, grab her board and run for it, propel her body into the sea and give in to the undeniable rush that comes of being on the very edge of losing control, the wild sea all around her.

But another part of her can hardly bear the thought of giving herself over to the sea again. She hates it, but she can’t deny it.

Niall claps her on the shoulder, “I’m going out. No judgment if you don’t follow. Just… thought you might be convinced by the sight of your first love.” She sighs. “She is lovely isn’t she?”

Louis makes a face instead of answering that.

Niall rolls her eyes, picks up her gear, and skips, actually skips, down the beach.

Louis stands there for a second considering—I have to make a decisive decision— and finally decides her decisive decision will involve getting an ice cream and thinking some more about what to do.

…

So the girl at the ice cream stand is overwhelmingly hot. Not hot like, take a second appreciative glance and maybe mention her offhand to your friends later but hot like, oh god, you’ve been staring too long, you might melt into a puddle right here from the sheer heat radiating off this masterful creation how in god’s name did mother nature even…

Louis is practiced at downplaying her reactions, thank fuck. 

The girl just lays the limp paperback she’s reading on the counter and regards Louis sleepily out of those sinful dark eyes. The back of one of her hands is covered in a lacy tattoo.

Louis squints at the listing of ice cream flavors. “Um, any recommendations?” she says.

Hot girl blinks, pushes back her inky hair, rubs the edge of her thumb along her lower lip and then says heavily, “Pineapple is appalling.”

Louis gives this due consideration. “That’s not a recommendation.” She says at last.

“Yes it is. I’m recommending you avoid pineapple.” Casually she adds, “It tastes like congealed piss.”

Louis is almost curious what that tastes like. Almost. “Noted. Any good flavors though?”

Hot girl turns her head to look at the listing as well. Her jawline is simply not bloody fair. “Chocolate’s always a safe choice.” She offers.

“Two scoops of chocolate,” Louis says, because hot girl is right, chocolate is always a safe choice and because hot girl is fucking hot, like holy hell. Louis doesn’t necessarily like being told what to do but she might not mind if hot girl told her what to do.

Louis is rewarded with a tired but bright smile and a cup of chocolate ice cream. “We’re out of cones,” hot girl explains as she rings up Louis’ order, “I can’t figure out the machine and the other girl who’s usually here is M.I.A.” 

“How hard can it be to figure out an ice cream cone making machine?” Louis asks, leaning against the counter as she wrangles some bills from her wallet.

“Exactly as hard as you make it out to be.” Hot girl says, as if she’s imparting some deep wisdom, “Besides, no one’s complained as yet so I figure why bother trying? I mean, you’ve got to, like,”—she droops a little against the counter and fans herself with an air of lethargic drama—“mix the batter and stuff.”

Louis laughs, “Fair point.”

She’s considering chatting the girl up, at least test the waters, find out if she’s gay or not, but goddamn Liam Payne has to arrive just then, in all her bikini clad glory and ruin the fun. “Tommo.” Liam says, striding up and leaning on the counter. 

Louis is a professional surfer, she’s won awards, thank you very much, and it takes a certain, rather impressive if she does say so herself, level of fitness to be an award winning surfer. But the Liam Payne, with her perfectly toned stomach and upper arm strength has to come along and make everyone look inadequate.

At least the answer to whether hot-ice-cream girl is gay is probably answered. Surely no straight girl would be eyeing Liam’s torso that way.

“Hey, Liam,” Louis says.

“Niall said she’s treating you to dinner tonight.” Liam says.

Louis spoons up some ice cream, “Really, what’s the occasion?”

“I dunno. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are in America after all. Anyway, she invited me along.”

“Nice of her.”

Liam seems to suddenly notice that they are in the presence of an actual Greek goddess, Venus, descendent of Helen of Troy, whatever. She blinks.

“Oh,” Louis says, “This is, um, hot-ice-cream-girl?”

Hot-ice-cream-girl smiles, rolls her eyes. “Zayn.” She says, offering her hand to Liam, “Nice to meet you.”

“Liam.” Liam says. They smile at each other in perfect tandem.

Louis gags behind her hand.

Zayn shoots her a look, “Problem with the ice cream?” she says sharply.

“Yeah, never been able to stomach it out of a cup. Why no cones again?” Louis says.

Zayn snorts derisively and looks at Liam. Liam sighs like, I know right?

“Okay,” Louis says, “You just met and you’re already unbearable. I’m leaving. Also don’t take it personally if I start a betting pool on how long it takes you to get into each other’s pants.”

She flees across the sand. She can’t hear anything behind her. Either they’ve been rendered silent and blushing or they’re already snogging across the counter of the ice cream booth.

Louis doesn’t look back to find out.

She might be a tiny bit annoyed. If that makes her a dick so be it. C’est la vie or whatever.

Louis doesn’t go surfing that day.

Instead she smears her skin with sunscreen and lolls about on the beach all day watching Niall and alternately yelling encouragement or insults as she deems the situation requires.

“You could have done better on that one!” she shouts as Niall climbs back onto her board yet again after a spill. “For god’s sake, Niall, I thought you were a professional.”

Niall yells back, “Well, get off your lazy bum and show me how it’s done you bleeding wanker.”

“I’m waiting for a really perfect day,” Louis tells Niall as they drive back to Louis’, “Something worthy of my stunning comeback. The Tommo’s first day back in the game can’t just be any old sunny day.”

Niall just nods. She knows Louis is full of shit but she just accepts it as though it makes sense and Louis isn’t acting like a right arsehole. 

Louis doesn’t say anything but she appreciates it.

What she appreciates even more, or at least is willing to admit she appreciates, is Niall buying her an industrial sized pizza for dinner and as many pints as she wants when they go out that night.

Louis is totally down to get wasted.

To compound this feeling Liam and Zayn show up together and look totally perfect together. Louis decides to take credit for that, because she doesn't want to seem sad and lonely, and because honestly if she hadn’t been loitering by the ice cream booth Liam wouldn’t have walked up to it and they never would have met.

“That’s bullshit.” Liam says. “I would have walked up to the booth eventually. Not like I have anything else to do while you and Niall are on the waves.”

“Okay, but,” Louis raises a finger, “Your very first bonding moment was over me being a shit.” She spreads her hands wide. “You’re welcome.”

Liam rolls her eyes like Louis is ridiculous, and Zayn says, "Actually, mate, it was the muscles." she pokes Liam in the stomach and adds, "I could do my laundry on them."

"Right," Louis mutter darkly, "I'm sure that's what you want to do with her."

Zayn smirks. "I'd be down to do something dirtier if the opportunity arose."

The way Liam blushes and picks at her pizza, biting her lip to hide a fledgling smile is enough to make a ball of guilt unfurl in Louis' chest for not being properly happy for them. She sighs and raises her pint into the air. "Here's to sexual attraction," she says, pulling a broad smile onto her face. "May it bring you many orgasms."

"I'll toast to that," Niall crows and the four girls click glasses over the table in a cacophony of laughter and mingled voices.


	2. Chapter 2

The weather forecasters are liars and cheats.

The weather report claimed it was going to be clear today, not a cloud in the sky, hot enough to burn the tarmac. (Niall called Louis that morning for the express purpose of yelling about how great the waves had been yesterday and how, “Listen, Tommo, Jesus fuck, they’ll be even better today. Off the bloody hook.” Louis had made an obligatory dickish comment and hung up.) 

The latter is developing to be true—Louis is regretting the black skinny jeans and long sleeves, although her bum looks fantastic—but the sky is patently not clear. Deep black clouds are gathering on the horizon, roiling up into threatening shapes against the white sky.

“Shit.” Louis mumbles.

The first drop of rain hits the pavement and actually sizzles in the heat. 

“Shit.” Louis says again, in case any of the powers that be hadn’t noticed her annoyance the first time.

She’s meant to be making her way to the beach, she's meeting Niall and Liam for something, Louis stopped listening once Liam said, “Niall said she'd bring drinks.” But right now what she wants most is not to get rained on. She rotates, eyes squinted against the downpour, looking for somewhere to camp out so she doesn’t have to walk through this shit. 

Some part of her brain distractedly registers someone muttering a curse word, and a sound like a damp bird trying to take flight and then... 

wham!

Louis doubles over. “Fuck.” She says.

When picturing her day it definitely didn’t include getting hit in the crotch by a gold Victorian looking umbrella wielded by a female giant. 

And yet here she is.

“Oh my god,” says aforementioned umbrella wielding giant, whilst Louis leans her hands on her knees and wheezes, “Are you ok?”

Louis informs the ground in a monotone, “I may never use my vagina again.”

“Well,” the girl’s voice is less concerned now that Louis doesn't seem to actively be dying, and has gotten slow and a little raspy, “that’d be a right tragedy.”

Louis decides it's safe to stand up. Nothing actually hurts anymore. She looks up at the girl who's attacked her. She’s wearing glittery silver Doc Martens, the sort of skinny jeans that are trying too hard to justify the use of the adjective skinny, and a white tee shirt through which her red bra is clearly visible, especially with the rain soaking the fabric over her shoulders. Also visible through the shirt are the dark smudges of several tattoos, but it's impossible to tell what they are. Most of her rich brown hair is pulled up into an apocalyptic knot atop her head, but several curly tendrils have escaped. 

“Yeah,” Louis says, “I’m very attached to it.”

Pretty girl blinks several times and then smiles the sort of smile that typically warns of an imminent giggle, “Yeah,” she says slowly, “that you are.”

And then she shakes out her umbrella, “Sorry about that. I was trying to get it open but it won't cooperate. I think the springs are rusty or something.” She adds brightly, beaming at Louis, apparently not that bothered by the rain, “It’s an antique.” After another second of struggle (Louis just watches) the girl gets the umbrella open, this time succeeding in not maiming any passerby, and raises the umbrella over her head. 

She smiles triumphantly at Louis, as if Louis could consider that umbrella to be anything other than her nemesis at this point, and says, “Share?”

Warm drops of rain are sliding down the back of Louis’ neck, and making her shirt stick to her in a way that feels uncomfortably like sweat, and she’d quite like to not be rained on anymore, but she also has a policy of avoiding possible insane people.

“It looks like a fucking Russian onion dome.” Louis says, because she's not sure how to escape.

Possibly-crazy-very-pretty-girl renders Louis’ non-movement irrelevant by crossing the few feet of sidewalk between them and standing right next to Louis—so close Louis can smell the sweet perfume at the hollow of her throat—so that the golden umbrella shields them both.

“Harry,” she says, holding out her hand to Louis. She has graceful pianists hands, with a few chunky silver rings. 

Louis takes it. “Natasha,” she says. If gorgeous leggy Harry is a psychopath she really shouldn’t know Louis’ real name. Harry’s hands are warm and soft, and her lips curve up into a little smile. Her eyes are very green.

Just then there’s a buzz, and Harry let’s go of Louis hand to dig her phone out of her pocket. She bites her lower lip as she swipes the message open. “Can you..? Here, hold.” she hands Louis the umbrella and taps out a reply.

All attempts to stealth read Harry's text prove unsuccessful, so Louis stares out into the sheets of falling rain and waits for her to finish.

"Sorry," she mumbles, biting her lip, "I'm late for work, my friend is wondering where I am." she angles her phone slightly and Louis catches a glimpse of the screen. The contact name is just a Z with two yellow flower emojis, and the last text is simply a question mark, to which Harry has replied, _omw_. "Anyway," Harry musses her hair, and looks up directly into Louis eyes, which is just slightly breathtaking. "Where're you headed? I can walk you."

Louis sniffs and flips her hair. “To the beach. Take your stupid umbrella and try not to put anyone’s eye out with it.”

Harry’s smile flashes back onto her face, and she crams her phone away and takes her umbrella from Louis as if it’s a benediction.

“Perfect, me too. Shall we?” she says, and curls her arm around Louis’ elbow like she thinks they’re in a regency novel.

So they walk together down the street toward the beach, and around them the rain slows and finally stops, but Harry doesn’t lower the umbrella.

Louis finally says, "So tell me about yourself."

“Me?”

“Yeah. What brings you to the lovely state of Hawaii?”

Harry shrugs, twirling her umbrella, “I’m just sort of drifting, I guess. Taking a gap year before I go home to go to Uni.”

“You like to travel? You want to see the world, like?”

“Well,” Harry tugs absently on a loose curl, “I guess so, but it’s more the people I find really interesting, you know? Like it’s easy to forget what the world is like if you stay in one place, but then, you go somewhere, and it’s like a whole new world, people who have a totally different way of looking at things than you’re used to.”

Louis laughs, “I’m not sure America is the place to go for a dose of real culture.”

“Oh but that’s what I’m saying,” Harry tells her, drawing her syllables out like taffy. “Even places that are, you know, in some ways a lot like the UK, right, like same language and similar social levels and all, it’s like, it’s the thought process yeah? I don’t know how to explain it it’s like—oh!”

She’s tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. Louis manages to just barely catch her by the elbow, and when Harry straightens she’s right up in Louis’ space. Her breath smells like peppermint. Harry slides the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. Louis feels her pulse go jagged.

“Well,” Louis lets go quickly and steps back. “Maybe you can explain it to me later. Right now focus on walking. Look, it’s not hard, one foot in front of the other…”

Harry smacks Louis on the arm, and mutters, “Shut up.”

Louis gives Harry her best guileless grin, and takes a deep breath when she looks away.

The rest of the walk goes by quickly. Thank god they were already close to the beach, Louis doesn't think she can handle much more time with this ridiculous girl.

They bump into Zayn walking past the showers, and Zayn says, "Harry," and Harry says, "Zayn!" and Zayn says, "Louis," and Harry says, "Natasha?" and Louis says, "Um... Do you two know each other?"

Harry and Zayn share a glance. "Yeah," Zayn says, "this is the girl who was M.I.A."

"Ohh, the one who knows how to use the waffle cone machine."

Zayn points at Louis. "Exactly."

"Nice to meet you, I'm Louis."

"Louis?"

"Yeah, well, I couldn't tell you my real name in case you were a serial killer." Louis explains.

"I think if I was a serial killer I would have tried to make a better first impression." Harry says.

"Yeah, you'd make a shit serial killer," Zayn says, "now move your ass, we have work to do, whiny children to feed."

"Yeah, sure. It was nice to meet you, Louis!" And Zayn and Harry stroll away across the freshly sun soaked sand.

"Tommo!" Niall bellows, when Louis finds her and Liam. "What took you so long?"

"I was assaulted by a serial killer," Louis flings herself onto Liam's blanket, "and then I had to pretend to be someone else, and then I ran into Zayn--"

Liam perks up. "Zayn is here?"

"Yeah, well, she works in the ice cream booth."

Niall snorts with laughter, "She wouldn't go over to it because she was afraid Zayn wouldn't be there so she's pretending she doesn't care one way or the other."

"Go say hi, I'm sure she'd love to see you and your washboard abs."

Liam makes a face, and fidgets with her snapback. "Will you come with?"

"Liam, babe, actions speak louder than words," Louis advises, "Just go and pretend to be confidant and suave and that shit."

So Liam goes. Niall yells after her, "Yeah, girl, get some!" and snickers when Liam flips her off without even looking back. "What are we going to do with her?" Niall asks Louis, and Louis can only shake her head.

"Do you mind if I go swimming?" Niall says, "I mean, who knows how long Liam will take, all alone with Zayn in the ice cream booth..."

"Oh, they won't be alone. There's another girl who works there. Actually, maybe I should go keep Liam company. Save her from embarrassing herself?" Louis looks out of the corner of her eye at Niall.

She's grinning. "So do you like the other girl?"

Louis makes an affronted noise. "Not everything I do is motivated by lust."

Niall looks enormously skeptical, so Louis has to stay, and prove Niall wrong. Also Niall _is_ wrong so...

But then Liam texts her and she squeaks and tries to hide it from Niall but Niall, sneaky little bitch that she is manages to steal it after an intense wrestling match. She holds it above Louis' head and reads aloud triumphantly, "'Hey, is it good if Zayn comes with us when her shift is done? I also invited her co-worker...' Louis you are so thirsty.." Niall sticks her tongue between her teeth in mocking deep concentration and says as she types, "'Tell her... I want to lick... her... pussy.'"

Louis screams and grabs her phone back. "You whore." she erases Niall's typing and tells Liam, _Yeah, that's fine. The more the merrier!_

Niall is reading over her shoulder. "Good job. Way to sound natural. I'm serious!" she says when Louis smacks her arm.

Louis aggressively turns off her phone. "Shut up, I just met her."

...

Harry immediately trips on the soft sand, proving Louis right to have insisted Harry not be allowed to carry anything from the car. She rights herself with grace, though, and comes to stand next to Louis. “Remember what I was saying earlier about seeing things through other people's eyes?”

Louis sets down the box of bottles. They've moved on to another beach for bonfire night. “Yeah, that’s why you like to travel.”

“Right, well, Liam was saying how you're a professional surfer? And I thought you could show me around the island. But not the touristy shit. The stuff you really love.”

Louis assesses how serious Harry is for a second, and then sits down and sprawls out on a blanket. “Honestly, mate,” she says upwards to the sky, “I’m not sure asking a Brit for a tour of the real Oahu is gonna get you great results. What do I know?”

Harry folds her long legs underneath her to sit next to Louis. “But—”

Zayn hands Harry a full glass and interrupts, “I think it’s a great idea. It’ll be fun.”

Liam, to Louis' disgust, colludes. "It'll give you something to do instead of sitting around being dramatically tragic. Also you think Harry's fit."

Louis sits up quickly, "I do not!"

"Heey!"

Louis turns the full force of her frown on Liam, and then reassures Harry, "I mean not that you're not fit, you're very, uh, very pretty, but I'm not, like..."

Niall, wisely, says, "Shut up," and then ruins it by adding, "and say you'll do it."

“Fine." Louis pours herself a giant drink. "Welcome aboard the Tommo Tour Bus. Prepare to be amazed.”

Her and Harry clink glasses, and Louis looks out to the sea and thinks, “Shit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

The phone ringing is what wakes Louis up. She groans and pulls her pillow up over her head. “Go away,” she mutters. Her phone keeps shrilling.

After an agonizing several minutes, Louis’ head pounding, phone ringing incessantly, she drags herself out of bed to dig through the pockets of her jeans and pick up the phone.

“What do you want?” she says, not bothering to check the caller ID. 

“Louis?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Richard.”

Louis closes her eyes and lets herself fall sideways until she curled on the floor of her bedroom. She pulls in a deep breath. “Okay.” She says, her chest empty.

“Well… I think it’s time we had a talk.”

Louis pressed her fingers into her forehead. “Can this wait, Richard? I just woke up and I have a headache—”

“I think it’s better if we have this conversation now, actually,” Richard interrupts her.

“Fuck,” Louis mutters.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Can you hold on a sec? I gotta piss.” And Louis climbs to her feet and leaves the phone on the floor without waiting for an answer.

Liam is sitting in the kitchen painting her toenails and she gives Louis a concerned look when she staggers in. “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Louis starts opening all the cupboards. “Richard phoned.” 

“Oh, babe.”

“Do we have any aspirin?” Louis asks, slamming shut another cupboard.

“Yeah, it’s, uh, here.” 

“Thanks,” Louis says. She leans against the counter to fill her glass with water and wash down a couple of pills. When she turns around Liam has this pinched pitying look on her face and Louis mutters, “Why does everyone keep giving me that look.”

Liam, ever the diplomat, smooths out her expression and says, “What’d Richard say?”

“Well, I dunno, I told him I had to pee and left. But, like, he started off by going,” Louis imitates a deep, patronizing voice, “‘I think it’s time we had a talk, Louis.’ So, he’s gonna say I have to get back in the game or whatever.” She shrugs, and kicks out a chair from the kitchen table and sits. “He’s right. I mean, Niall has been saying for ages. It’s just fucking bullshit, you know? Such bullshit.”

“Louis,” Liam reaches across the table to take Louis’ hand, “Lou, it’s normal to be scared—”

“I don’t care if it’s—it’s still bullshit, like, fuck, surfing is my life, nothing should be able to take that from me, least of all myself.”

“Well,” Liam rubs her thumb over the back of Louis’ hand, “Loads of surfers have really scary accidents, and it’s not easy to go back to something that really fucked with you. People get scared for a reason, your body won’t let you do things that might hurt you.”

Louis can’t help but laugh at that, “If that was true I’d never have even started surfing.”

“Well do you want to go back to it?”

“Yes, god, yes. I just, I need time.”

Liam looks at her for a long second, “Maybe you’ll never know if you’re ready or not unless you go for it.”

“Yeah, well. I better go. Richard will think I have a urinary tract infection. Or maybe,” she adds brightly, “Maybe he’ll have hung up.”

Liam shakes her head as Louis goes back to her bedroom.

Richard hasn’t hung up. He says, “Louis, thing is, there are rumors going around.”

“Rumors?” Louis sits on the edge of her bed. “What d’you mean?”

“Your friend, Liam Payne?”

“What about her?”

“How close are you with Miss Payne?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Are you asking me if Liam and I are a couple? Liam and I? Are you serious right now?”

“Louis please stay calm.”

“I am fucking calm!”

“Louis.”

Louis breathes out slowly, “Sorry.”

“Well, thing is, it’s obviously not really my business whether or not you’re gay, or whether or not you and Miss Payne are intimate. But your public image is my business, and none of this is good for your public image.”

Louis pulls up her legs and rest her chin on her knees. “What?” she says softly.

“Professional surfing has been a man’s game for a long time, and a large portion of the fan base is still male, even for women’s surfing.”

“Holy shit. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Men are less likely to support a gay female surfer.” Richard says, his voice monotone and professional, like that’ll save him from sounding like an asshole.

“If you’re saying I’m not allowed to be gay because guys don’t think that’s hot well, first of all, fuck you, and second of all, have you ever watched lesbian porn, Richard?”

“Excuse me?”

“Men don’t have any problem with two girls fucking each other if it’s for their amusement. Also last I checked a huge portion of my fan base was female. 'Surfing is a men's sport.' You're so full of shit.”

“Louis, you are, you were, until recently, one of the best female surfers in the world. I would hate to tell you I can’t be your manager anymore. I’m one of the best in the business. And you can’t afford to lose that right now.”

Louis feels like her lungs are collapsing inward. “What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that in the past several months your reputation has suffered. If you return to surfing it will be very hard for you to go back to your previous, uh, credibility without someone backing you, and obviously as I'm already established as your manager, and I still have excellent credibility in the surfing world it makes sense for that someone to be me.”

Louis knows the answer but she can’t help making him say it, “What does this have to do with Liam?” 

Richard gives a gusty sigh, “I think you should let yourself be seen with someone else. Let there be rumors you're dating a man. If you're willing to confirm these rumors that would be ideal, and I can find someone to pretend to be your boyfriend if necessary, but that's up to you.”

“I’m not dating Liam.”

“You know as well as I that in the fame game it doesn’t matter what the truth is, it only matters what people think it looks like.”

“I’ll call you back. I have to think about this.” Louis ends the call, but she sits there for a long time, looking into space while square of light the sun casts through the window slowly crawls across the floor and up the wall.

…

When Louis finally leaves her room to make a cup of tea she finds Liam and Zayn pressed up against the counter, so close to each other that minus a couple centimeters of space they’d be kissing.

Louis clears her throat obnoxiously just to watch them stagger guiltily apart. 

“Sorry,” she says, sauntering past them to grab the kettle and fill it with water, “Am I interrupting something?”

Zayn doesn’t look up from the floor but Liam says, “You’re such a shit, Louis. How’d your talk with Richard go?”

“Apparently we’re dating.” Louis points sternly at Zayn, “So no making a move on my girlfriend, alright?”

Liam blinks, “What? You and me?”

“Yeah I know. Lucky, innit? Don’t lie to me, Payne, I know you’ve always wanted in my pants. And really who can blame you? These thighs aren't just good for surfing.”

“You’re such a shit.”

Louis laughs and finishes making her tea. “Love you too, babe.” And she smacks a kiss on Liam’s cheek as she passes her to sit down. “Let’s go out, tonight, yeah? I’m bored sitting around in this house all day.”

“You’re the one who’s been moping in your room,” Zayn says, “At least the way Liam tells it.”

“What?” Louis gasps, “Liam, how could you? You’re my favorite girlfriend!”

“Yeah, let’s go out. We can invite Harry too, yeah? You liked her, didn't you, Louis?” Liam isn’t really looking at Louis when she says this, in fact she seems to have thoroughly fallen into the doe like dark pools of Zayn’s eyes. Louis politely refrains from pointing out how stupid Liam looks, and only nods her agreement.

…

That night Louis shuts herself in the bathroom to get ready, but she can still hear as Niall and Harry come in. They'd agreed they'd meet here for pre drinks.

She has to look good tonight, but not too good, not like she’s trying too hard, because she’s pretty sure Liam is already suspicious that Louis’ wasn’t totally honest about the phone call, and Liam knows her well enough to recognize the signs of her deflection. 

Finally she decides on a pair of dark skinny jeans and a white t shirt. Her hair is a mess, even when she tries to style it, so she just shoves a gray beanie over it and tries to comb the part in the front into something not too disastrous. After a while Liam comes and knocks on the door and yells, “Everyone’s arrived. What the hell are you doing in there?”

“Your mum!”

“Way too easy, Tomlinson. Come on, get out here. Stop messing with your hair or whatever.”

Louis lowers her hands, “I’m not—”

“Yeah, whatever. Come on.”

The kitchen is full of laughter and the glitter of glasses. Zayn looks the same as usual, but Niall’s wearing a cute blue dress, and Harry has on a strapless dress made out of brilliantly colorful fabric looks like it came from someone’s grandmothers curtains, as well as high heels that add a totally unnecessary six inches to her height. Louis can see more of her tattoos now, she got a seemingly random collection of images spattered down one arm, and a pair of swallows under her collarbones.

“Have a drink, Louis.” Niall says, “Have two.”

“Thanks, mate. You look cute.”

Niall smirks, “I always do. And I even convinced Liam we should take a cab so she can drink.”

Louis and Niall high five and Louis decides not even to think about manager dickhead Richard all night.

Harry greets Louis with a grin and Louis greets Harry with a, "What the fuck are you wearing?"

"Do you like it?"

"You're absolutely ridiculous, you know that?"

Harry smiles complacently, "I'm going to take that as a yes unless you explicitly say otherwise."

And all Louis can think to do is shake her head and laugh. They fall into to each other with ease, Louis sitting right next to Harry on the couch, as comfortable as if they've known each other for years. The drinks Niall and Zayn keep handing round help, of course, but Louis can't help feeling that she and Harry have a quality to them. They fit together.

They stumble out sometime around nine. Louis’ already tipsy and she feels an arm snake around her waist as they stand waiting for the cabs.

She looks up into Harry’s perfect green eyes. She’s wearing glittery gold eye shadow. She says, voice rough and languorous, “Careful.”

“Of what?” Louis asks. Harry’s eyelashes are extra-long and dark tonight.

“Of falling.” Her cupids bow mouth turns up at the corners, “Falling over I mean.”

“Huh,” Louis reaches up and experimentally presses her finger into Harry’s dimple. “I’m not sure I trust you to keep me from falling.”

“You should.” Harry’s voice is like smoke. Louis thinks she might be able to get high from inhaling it.

“Hey!” Zayn’s voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away, “Tomlinson, stop touching Harry’s face and let’s go. The cabs are here.”

And look at that, so they are.

Harry presses a kiss to Louis forehead, “I’ll see you at the club. I promised I’d ride with Zayn."

As Harry walks away, slim hips swaying, Louis says softly, “But you promised to keep me from falling.”

When she climbs into the cab, the one Harry’s not in, Niall says, “Louis you’ve got lipstick on your forehead.” 

And Louis, head fuzzy with rum, says the first thing that comes into her head, “She promised she'd keep me from falling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will pick up where this one ends. get ready kids
> 
> (Also, I know almost nothing about surfing, I'm trying to do research to get most things right, and I'm taking a little artistic license for the sake of the plot, but let me know if anything strikes you as really wrong. I'm also American so let me know if I'm making the girls sound too American on accident)


	4. Chapter 4

They follow Zayn and Harry’s cab through the streets at a slow crawl. Niall reaches across the backseat to poke Louis in the chest and say, wiggling her eyebrows, “Hey, Harry looks nice tonight doesn’t she?”

Louis slides down in her seat and groans. “Don’t let me drink too much, I’m going to do something stupid tonight I can feel it.”

“Have you ever gotten drunk and not done something stupid?” Liam says, not looking up from where she’s tapping at the screen of her phone.

“Leeyuum.” Louis whines.

“Loooueeeee.” Liam says back, pitch perfect imitation, still not looking up.

“I didn’t do anything stupid at that magazine work party,” Louis says, slumping down a little further so her chin digs into her clavicle.

Liam finally looks up from her phone to exchange a skeptical look with Niall who rolls her eyes and says, “That was four years ago. Also you gave the boss’s daughter a hickey, threw up on the cat, and stole a case of red wine.”

“That wasn’t stupid. She was hot, and that wine lasted, like, two weeks.”

Liam raises her eyebrows, “You almost got fired.”

“It was a shite job anyway.”

“Okay, Louis.” Liam says in her placating Louis voice. Louis is a little alarmed that this happens so often that Liam has a specific recognizable tone of voice just for the occasion.

Louis presses a hand to her eyes, “Fuuuck,” she whispers, “Fucking fuck fucker.”

No one seems to think that comment requires a reply, but Niall absentmindedly pats Louis on the head and right about then the car jerks to an abrupt halt. Louis’ head thumps against the seat and she pouts at the world in general. Liam pays the driver, and climbs out, holding the door open. “Come on,” Niall says, “You’ll be fine. Come ooon, Lou, I want to get drunk and have fun.” 

Harry appears at Niall’s elbow. “Hey, Louis. Are you sick?” she looks genuinely worried, a little crease between her eyebrows.

Louis jerks upright. “Nope,” she says, clambering out of the car. 

Harry wraps an arm around Louis waist as they walk in and whispers into Louis’ ear, “I didn’t forget my promise you know.”

“I was real worried there,” Louis looks up at Harry with big eyes, she blinks earnestly a few times for good measure. “I don’t know if I could’ve done this all by myself. I mean, shit, it’s like a solid ten feet from the taxi to the door. Anything could happen.”

Harry pokes her finger into Louis midriff, “Hey, why are leaves so bad at changing light bulbs?”

“Harry—what? Because they don’t have any fucking arms?”

Harry shakes her head, unperturbed, “No, because they keep falling.”

Louis shakes her head and shoves open the door, “I can’t talk to you ever again, oh my god, how old are you?”

“ ‘M twenty.” 

“I wasn’t serious—never mind.” 

Zayn ambles up from behind them. She has an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She says, to no one in particular, “I’ll find a table.”

Liam and Niall go off to get drinks, and Louis grabs Harry’s hand to follow Zayn. They find the only empty booth in the whole place and Harry and Louis scoot into one side, while Zayn sits on the other. When Niall and Liam come back Niall slides into them, sending Louis a gleeful smirk as Harry pitches into her side. “Oops, sorry, Lou.” Harry looks up at Louis through her eyelashes, and sinks her teeth into her lower lip.

“Blame Niall,” Lois says, grabbing a drink, mindless of whose it is, and taking a gulp. She can’t deal with Harry’s face while she’s this sober.

Harry doesn’t seem to be in line with Louis’ logical line of thinking though, because she doesn’t move away, just stays pressed all along Louis’ side while she sips at her drinks and runs her tongue over her pink lips. Louis’ heart is a kick drum. 

Luckily Niall is clearly a better friend than Harry will ever be. She keeps rounds of drinks coming, they pour down at least three rounds of shots, one of them Louis is pretty sure was blue, and tasted like actual flaming gasoline, and Niall comes up with increasingly more ridiculous things to toast, (“To Jack Sparrow’s left beard braid!” “Captain Jack Sparrow,” Zayn corrects.)

And all of them are laughing and leaning across the table to talk to one another and the five of them are queens of this night as their speech grows ever more muddled. Zayn loses her effortlessly cool veneer and reveals herself to be a total dork, Liam goes starry eyed watching her, and Niall, well, Niall is Niall. Harry doesn’t say much, she just laughs a lot, which Louis finds oddly endearing. At some point Louis presses her hand into Harry's thigh to emphasize a point, and then she just sort of leaves it there, her thumb making lazy circles in the silky fabric of Harry's dress. Harry doesn't say anything when this happens, just glances sideways at Louis and leans a little more into her. Eventually in Louis’ periphery Zayn and Liam get up and go to the dance floor. Niall vanishes not long after.

Louis hadn't realized it was mostly the other three making the conversation. In the relative quiet she takes her hand off Harry's leg and clears her throat. Harry is still pressed up against her, and now she reaches out and takes Louis hand. Gently she slides her fingers along the inside of Louis wrist. Louis doesn’t move. All her energy is concentrated on not reacting to the pressure of Harry’s fingers along her pulse point. Harry leans in. Her hair smells like raspberries. “Do you want to dance?” she says.

It would be an innocuous enough question—just fun between friends, that sort of thing—if Harry just didn’t have that rough, smoky voice, like she’s half fucked already, if Louis hadn't spent half the evening with her palm warm against Harry's upper thigh, if Harry's fingertips weren't softly pressing into Louis palm.

“Um,” Louis clears her throat, trying to clear her muzzy head, “Yeah, sure, yeah,”

Harry smiles, dimples peeking out, and pushes back her hair, before scooting sideways out of the booth and offering Louis her hand.

Louis accepts it and is swept, nearly literally, right off her feet.

“Shit, mate,” Harry says, to the pair of frowning men in bro tanks they’d nearly knocked over, “I’m so sorry,”

One of the men says, in a thick Australian accent, smile blooming, “Not to worry, love.”

Whatever Louis thought had been happening between her and Harry is broken. Harry positively sparkles at him, “Can I buy you a drink?” and then a second later she’s leaning in to kiss Louis on the cheek, whispering, “I’ll be back in a second,” and heading toward the bar with the Australian.

Louis raises her eyebrows at bro number two. He smiles slowly, “Your girlfriend is lovely, you make a cute couple.”

“Oh," Louis says, taken aback, "we’re not, uh, we’re not dating,” Louis tells him, just as the music switches to something with a heavy beat, and the crowd screams their approval.

Bro 2 leans in, “What?”

“We’re not dating!”

“I’m sorry I can’t hear—”

"We aren't.." Louis sighs. “Thank you, thanks.”

He nods brightly at her, and wanders off.

Harry doesn’t come back. Louis finishes her drink, and then finishes the dregs of everyone else’s. She goes onto the dance floor in search of Niall. Guided by an enthusiastic Irish voice yelling “We’re up all night with the sun! We’re up all night for good fun! We’re up all night to get lucky!” Louis finally tracks her down, and leans against her back until she turns around and says, “Louis, what—”

“I want to dance, Ni,”

“How drunk are you? What happened to Harry?” Niall takes Louis shoulders and holds her upright. “Lou?”

Louis takes a step forward and whispers in Niall’s ear, “The Aussies stole her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Louis decides, because it doesn’t. The Aussies can have Harry. She probably can’t even dance. “I want to dance, Ni Ni.”

Niall laughs, tipping her head back, the lights moving across her face making her look alien and strange. “C’mere then.” 

She presses up into Louis space, putting her hands on her shoulders, and closing her eyes, grin wild and free and full of teeth.

And so they dance, laughing and falling over each other, drunk on alcohol and adrenaline. The music swoops around them, and sometimes Louis catches a glimpse of Zayn and Liam dancing close together, and once or twice Harry, standing at the bar, talking to a pretty girl, tossing back a drink in the corner of the room… Louis looks away quickly every time, so as not to be caught staring.

Louis leaves Niall to get another drink at the bar, and bumps into a skinny girl with a white blond pixie cut, who offers to buy Louis a drink, and then drags her back onto the dance floor. The girl is a nursing major, Louis learns, she loves Daft Punk, and she has very very nice tits. They dance together for a while, stumbling a little but having too much fun to care. At some point, Louis finally looks up and finds Harry watching her, a little frown tugging on the corners of her perfect lips. A dirty thrill runs through Louis. When she meets Harry's eyes meet the air goes still. Louis doesn’t look away as she slides her hands lower on the girls waist.

The girl giggles into Louis shoulder, and says something, barely discernible over the sound of Louis chaotic heartbeat, something along the lines of the mildly suggestive things they've been murmuring to each other all night. But Louis is watching Harry. She catches the exact moment when Harry decides she's had enough. Her eyes darken, and she pushes her way across the room.

“Mind if I cut in?”

Louis doesn’t even watch the girl leave, she seems to melt away without even trying.

Harry’s breath smells like vodka and sugar. She says, slurring, eyes full of something hot and unnameable, “Did you save me a dance?”

Louis has to swallow around a dry throat, and force her mind to clatter into gear because right now it’s just a mess of colored lights and _Harry Harry Harry_. “I don’t think that’s how it works these days, actually. Clubs, you know how they are,” Louis looks away to take a shuddery breath and gesture at the other people, writhing in the darkened room, “all sweat and, and, uh, skin on skin contact.” She chances a glance at Harry. Her eyes are almost black. “Very, uh,” Louis grabs for the ribbons of her fast disappearing thoughts, “very dirty and uncivilized.”

Harry messes up her hair, licks her lips, blinks at Louis and says, her voice painfully slow and graveled, “Maybe I like it dirty.”

Louis thinks maybe she needs to sit down. Is this normal? Is this how people usually act around someone they met literally days ago? And then Louis has to rethink that, struggling with her muddied thoughts because surely it hasn’t only been a few days, surely she’s known Harry longer?

Harry stumbles forward and put her arms around Louis’ neck. “Louis,” she says, “Louis, I want to say—”

Liam materializes like a goddamn ghost. “We’re leaving now, babes. Come on, I’ll help you.”

Harry turns and latches her arms around Liam instead, like a sleepy kitten.

A drunk disloyal kitten who needs to finish her fucking sentence. 

But she doesn’t, and Louis is left to stumble alone behind them to the curb, where Zayn is waiting, shoes in hand. Niall apparently is going home with someone, so the four of them pile into one taxi. Harry leans into Louis side and whispers, “I don’t feel good.”

“No throwing up in the taxi!” The taxi driver says loudly from the front seat. He mumbles something about young people, and clubs but no one is listening. 

Harry makes it all the way to Louis’ and Liam’s house and then pukes all over the front porch. 

“Shit,” Zayn says, reaching out to hold her up. She looks at Louis. “I can help her home, but, uh,” 

“No, no,” Liam steps heroically over the puddle of sick and opens the door. “She can stay here tonight, that’s fine,”

They get her inside, Zayn leaves in the taxi, and Liam gets Harry a glass of water. 

“I’m so sorry.” Harry says, several times, over Liam shushing her.

“It’s fine, really,” Liam leans on the table, remarkably sober, but still looking a little the worse for wear, “Seriously, Harry, it’s fine, you can take my bed.”

Louis looks up from rubbing mindless soothing circles on Harry’s back and says blearily, “Where’ll you sleep?”

“I can sleep on the—”

But Harry manages to speak over her, even though her voice is at least two octaves lower, and blurry with alcohol. “I can sleep with Louis.”

In the state she’s in it takes Louis several seconds to process this. “What? No. Besides my bed’s a twin.”

Harry’s smile is like the sun peeking out behind clouds. “We can cuddle.”

“You smell like sick.”

Liam is making her hopeful expression though, and there’s not actually an extra bed in the house, so Louis acquiesces. How could she say no to that face Harry's making, anyway?

Harry meant what she said about cuddling. Louis falls asleep with her whole body pressed against Harry’s and the last thing she hears before she drifts off is, “Thank you for being such a nice friend, Lou.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes


	5. Chapter 5

For the second time in two days Louis wakes up with a headache to the sound of her phone ringing. But this time her headache is worse, a persistent throbbing that starts behind her eyeballs and claws its way across her skull, and there’s someone else in the bed, arm draped over Louis waist. 

Harry groans, and her arm tightens around Louis. “No.”

“Harry, my phone—” Louis turns over and looks at Harry. She still has her eyes closed, remnants of eyeliner and mascara streaking her eyelids.

Just then the ringing stops. Harry’s eyes flutter open and she says, “There,” Her regular voice is bad enough; her just-woke-up voice is utterly devastating. “Don’t get up,” she shuts her eyes again and lifts one hand to clumsily press her finger to Louis mouth. “Shhh,” she mumbles, “sleeeep.”

Her finger drags down one corner of Louis’ lower lip. Louis stays completely still until Harry’s breathing is even again, and then sneaks out of the bed. She ends up falling on her bum, and looks up quickly to make sure she hasn’t woken Harry. She hasn’t, but Harry looks a little put out all the same, forehead wrinkled and one arm stretched across the bed toward Louis.

Louis gets to her feet slowly, aware of the various aches demanding attention across her body. The price of living, Niall calls it. Louis is honest enough to admit she’s just hungover. 

When she finally finds her phone, next to the door and underneath her coat, the screen reads Missed Call – Richard. She wants to throw the phone across the room. Instead she sets it carefully on a bookshelf, and goes into the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind her. There’s a note on the kitchen table, _Gone for a run, Liam_ and a mug with a tea bag waiting on the stove next to a full kettle. Louis switches on the flame, listens as the stoves hisses and blue flame leaps up. 

Whatever Richard has to say, Louis knows she doesn’t want to hear it. It’ll just be a tired repetition of what he said yesterday, or him urging her toward something else she’s not ready for. Louis sinks down to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees and tipping her head back against the cabinets. A familiar feeling twists cold and tight around her chest. Her lungs become a foreign entity.

How can this be what she’s fucking reduced to? How can she have let fear carry her so far from who she’s supposed to be? 

She closes her eyes.

The feeling of spiraling down beneath the waves, out of control, lungs constricting, eyes blinking open, stinging in the salt water, seeing nothing but endless pale blue, beautiful and deadly, and streams of red blood drifting idly up, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. It was so peaceful, almost serene, and in that split second she was sure that was it; the ocean gave her life, and wild unhinged freedom, and it would take it away. The fear didn’t really hit until days later.

But none of it was as awful, at the time, as thinking she wouldn’t be able to surf again, maybe wouldn’t be able to walk again. She just wanted cooperation from her body, and was horribly aware of how ironic it was that she might lose her autonomy and nothing else. 

The whistling kettle breaks Louis out of her thoughts, and remembering Harry sleeping peacefully in the other room, she hurries to get to her feet and turn it off. Liam is right, she think as she fixes her tea, I have to do something but fuck if I’m going to do it because Richard tells me to.

There are soft footfalls in the hallway. Louis looks up. Harry is standing in the doorway, a ridiculous pout on her face, and her hair in a wild tangle. She’s wearing nothing but lacy underwear and a t-shirt of Louis’ “Hey” she says.

Louis makes a face. “Hey, sorry did I wake you?” she says.

“Nahh, wasn’t really sleeping.” Harry slumps drowsily across the room and sinks into a chair, before rubbing at one eye and yawning, “Louis?”

“Yeah?” She expects Harry to ask for a cup of tea, or an aspirin maybe but Harry says, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Louis turns away, and opens a cupboard. “Do you want a cuppa?”

“Sure. Louis—”

Louis opens another cupboard. “Aspirin?”

“That’d be good. But, Louis—”

Louis turns on the sink and fills the kettle. She lets it clatter as she sets it back on the stove. “What kind of tea do you want? We have, well, let’s see, uh, we only have black tea actually. Do you mind?”

“No, black tea is fine. Louis I—”

“Okay, perfect, I’ll have that for you in a second, or you can even drink mine if you want, it’s on the table, I can have this one. Here, let me get an aspirin for you. Does your head hurt too much? How many do you want?” she turns to look at Harry, and is surprised that she’s managed to sneak up on her, is standing just a couple feet away looking vastly more awake than she did a minute ago.

Harry puts both hands on Louis’ shoulders and presses down. “Louis, shut up. Are you okay? You looked like you were about to cry.”

Louis beams up at Harry. “Nope, just drinking my tea. Although sometimes I think tea is worth crying over. It’s practically holy. If they don’t have tea in heaven I will turn right around at the pearly gates and take the highway to hell.”

Harry doesn’t look satisfied, but her dimple threatens to makes an appearance as she says, “What makes you think you’d get to heaven in the first place?”

“Hey!”

“Oh, be quiet and make my tea. You look cute all domestic and that.” And there’s the dimple.

Harry is going to be the death of Louis after all. She needn’t have spent all that time wallowing in fearful self-pity, she’s going to be taken down by a clumsy girl with stupidly pretty eyes and a raspy morning voice who can’t seem to decide if Louis is a friend or a fuck.

“Have your tea," Louis thunks it on the table, "and here’s your aspirin. No more talking.” But if Louis hoped Harry was that easily distracted she’s wrong. Harry follows Louis into the living room and sits next to her on the couch. “I know we just met and everything, but you can talk to me if you want.”

“I don’t want.”

Louis sips her tea and silence reigns until Harry says in a small voice, “Should I leave? Or…”

“No! Stay. If you want to, I mean… And, like, Liam will probably be home soon too, so…”

“Good, you’re rotten company. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that! I like spending time with you.” Harry’s face flashes through expressions, from teasing to horrified, to painfully eager.

“Oh my god.” Louis covers her face with one hand. “Why are you so earnest? It’s embarrassing to the rest of us emotionally constipated people.”

Harry sets her tea on the coffee table and reaches out to pat Louis’ head, “Don’t bottle up your feelings, Louis. They’ll explode. Like champagne.”

Louis can’t help but choke out a little laugh, “Like what?”

But Harry just pats Louis knee and stands up. “Do you want to put a film on? I’ll make you eggy bread.”

“Oh,” says Louis, “You don’t have to do that. We can—”

“No it’s fine. I like cooking. Besides, you look like the sort of person who feels better after eating.”

Louis hangs over the back of the couch to watch Harry walk to the kitchen and start rattling the pots and pans. “Are you calling me fat?”

Harry’s laugh rings back across the room, “You have a lovely body.”

Louis covers her face. “Is this how you talk to everyone?”

“No. Only people I think have a nice body.”

Louis peeks through her fingers. Harry has a hand propped on her hip, a frying pan in one hand, and a smirk on her face. She looks like one of those adverts that is pretending to sell kitchen appliances to women, but is actually selling sex appeal to men. Or women. Whatever. Louis remembers with a clarity the rest of the evening lacks, the way Harry put her arms around Louis neck, pupils swollen and dark, and whispered, "Louis, I want to say--" and then, just as she fell asleep, "Thank you for being a friend." Louis turns to the TV and away from Harry and her stupid face. “I’m gonna put something on. What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t care. What do you like?” There’s the sound of the fridge opening and then Harry says, “Do you have any eggs?”

“Uhh,” Louis stops clicking through Netflix to turn and stare at the back of Harry’s head. “Maybe? I don’t know when we last went to the store… Liam usually does that. I think. I don’t know food just usually sort of appears I guess I never thought about where it came from.”

“First of all,” Harry slams the fridge shut, “That’s ridiculous, and I want you to think about how ridiculous that is, and second of all, how can I make eggy bread without any eggs?”

“I never said you had to make eggy bread.”

Harry glares. 

“Make it without eggs?”

Harry flings her hands up toward the ceiling. “That’s called toast, Louis, and it’s not the same.”

“All I know is, I’m not in charge of buying the eggs so this isn’t my fault.”

Harry throws a dish towel at Louis’ head. Louis retaliates with a couch pillow. It hits Harry in the chest and drops sadly to the floor. Disregarding this entirely, Harry says, “Fine, I hope you enjoy your boring toast.”

“I will thank you.”

“It’s just,” Harry puts two pieces of bread in the toaster and pulls out a couple of plates, “I wanted to make you feel better.”

“Harry,” Louis wants to laugh and cry at the same time. “Harry thanks but I’m spectacular, really. I don’t need eggy toast to make me feel better. You’re an excellent distraction all by yourself.” Too much of a distraction, she thinks, as Harry leans over and rummages through the fridge again.

“Who was the phone call from?” Harry asks innocently.

Louis’ picks the remote back up and selects the most cliché looking rom-com she can find. “No one important.” A wailing pop song starts singing about New York and opportunity, and Louis can just hear the sounds of Harry puttering around in the kitchen.

The main character, a short girl in a waitressing uniform is taking her smoke break in a trash filled alleyway when Harry comes and sits next to Louis. “I made you another cup of tea,” she says, handing over a steaming mug, “and I found some jam,” she puts one plate on the coffee table and gives the other to Louis, “here’s your toast.” It’s perfectly golden brown round the edges with a neat spread of raspberry jam. 

Louis accepts the plate and balances it on her knees. “Thanks, Harry. Careful, if you keep this up I might decide to keep you.”

Harry makes a disgruntled face, but a smile is fighting to break through. “There’s no way I’d be able to keep this up. Your house has no food at all. I’m going to have to have a talk with Liam about dividing responsibilities.”

Louis snorts and takes a sip of her tea. “Oh. Wow, this is perfect. I really will have to keep you.”

Harry beams at that. “Hush,” she says, looking straight into Louis’ eyes, “I’m trying to watch the film.”

Louis glances sideways at the screen. The short waitress is now talking to a bubbly blonde girl across the counter of the diner. “Yeah,” Louis looks back at Harry, “You know, most people have to actually look at the film in order to watch it but—”

“Shut up.” Harry leans her head against Louis’ shoulder. “I’m gonna watch the fuck out of this film.”

Louis shakes her head and eats her toast. The phone call lingers in the back of her mind but she pushes it away to be dealt with later. Right now this morning is just peace and tea and the warm presence of a funny beautiful girl against her side. Onscreen the waitress bumps into someone, a tall dark handsome man, as they dash for the same taxi, and he knocks her purse off her arm. She yells at him, as he kneels to pick up her scattered belongings, and in the meantime someone else gets in the taxi. Harry snorts with laughter, covering her mouth with her palm and Louis thinks that right now, however confusing Harry is, this is more than enough.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s afternoon by the time Liam gets home, and Harry and Louis have moved on from the horrible rom-com (Harry protests that it was adorable, “Louis, don’t you believe in true love?”) to a dramatic action movie. Liam saunters in to the sound of rapid gunfire and pauses to she kicks off her shoes by the door. She tilts her head at the sight of them, curled together on the couch. “Hi, Harry. How are you?”

Harry looks up brightly. “I’m well, how are you?”

Liam looks questioningly at Louis. “I’m good. What’s, uh—”

Louis interrupts, “You were away for a long time to just be going for a run. Was it a good workout? Do you feel like you burned a lot of calories?”

Liam steps closer. She smells like Zayn’s perfume. “Yeah, pretty good workout.” If she was Louis she would be smirking, but she’s Liam and she looks as innocent as a virgin bride. Bitch.

Harry sits up then, “Also, there are no eggs.”

Liam looks bewildered. “What? Are you— what are you—”

Harry puts her hand on Louis’ thigh and Louis’ stomach muscles jump. She has to pray Harry didn’t notice her sharp inhale. But Harry isn’t paying any attention, she’s intent on Liam, “I was gonna make eggy bread but there’re no eggs in the house.”

“Well,” Liam’s gaze falls to where Harry is pressed against Louis, “Uh, buying eggs isn’t actually my job.”

Louis scoots a little bit away from Harry. “First of all, bullshit,” she holds up one finger, “and second of all,” she holds up another, “don’t come into my house smelling of sex and depravity and pretend you just went for a run. I want details, Payne.”

Liam blinks slowly. “We met up. We talked. We did not have sex.”

Harry pokes Louis in the side. “Leave the poor girl alone—” 

“Thank you, Harry—” 

“I’ll get all the details from Zayn and call you later—”

“You bitch!”

Harry giggles and hides her face in Louis shoulder and Liam flings herself down on the couch beside them.

“You’re dicks, the pair of you.” She says.

…

It’s just starting to get dark. Harry has dragged Liam to the grocery store with her, insisting she’ll make dinner for them —“There’s no food in this house, honestly, how do you two survive it’s worse than a bachelor pad”—, and the house feels quiet and eerily still without Harry by her side, Harry’s soft breathing and low voice.

Louis walks into her bedroom and closes the door behind her. She doesn’t bother turning on the light, even though the dusk is leaving shadows smeared across the walls and she can barely make out the shape of her furniture.

She feels around her shelves until she find her phone, and then sits on her bed and dials.

“Hello? Richard?”

“Hi, Louis.”

“Hey, sorry I missed your call this morning.”

“That’s alright. I actually have some good news, but first I wanted to know if you’d thought any more about what I said last time we spoke?”

“I did actually. I don’t think it makes sense. Liam and I aren’t dating, and I don’t see that it’s really an issue.”

“Louis, can you do something for me? Find a computer and Google yourself for me quickly.”

“Look, I don’t—”

“Please?”

Richard’s polite voice makes Louis want to put her fist through a wall but it’s also very hard to say no to without sounding like an asshole. “Okay, fine.” 

She opens up her laptop and clicks open Google. It’s slightly gratifying that "Louis Tomlinson" is the first choice that pops up when she types “Lou—” but when she clicks enter the first article is titled “Louis Tomlinson Ready to Get ‘Tide’ Down?” and features a picture of her and Liam on the beach with their heads close together. Liam has her hand on Louis lower back. 

The next article is titled, “Tommo Longing for CompanionShip?” Louis feels cold. She scrolls to the bottom of the page. The last few are about her injury, reporting a Bad Accident in the Surfing World, and Will Louis Tomlinson Recover in Time to Compete for the Championship? but the rest are gossip pages dedicated to whispers about her sexuality and pictures, mostly of her and Liam, but a few of her and Niall and one of her and Harry walking into the club just the other night. Louis stomach is a hollow pit, but she can’t help noticing how natural Harry’s arm looks curved around her waist.

Richard says, “Louis?”

“Yeah.” Louis says in a flat voice. “I guess I see what you mean.”

“I have good news too, like I said earlier.”

“What is it?”

“The WSL selected you as this year’s Championship Tour wildcard.”

“I—” She must have heard wrong. “What?”

“They want you to compete, Louis.”

Louis covers her mouth with one hand. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can. I know you have it in you, you’re just in a bad patch right now.”

Louis’ thoughts are a minefield. Every way she steps something will explode. “What do I have to do?” she says.

Richard’s voice is careful, silky smooth. “I’ll let them know you’re interested. We’ll enter you in the competition. We’ll have to work on your public image… And then, Louis, you’ll have to compete.”

Louis’ hand slides down her face and lands at her neck. She presses her fingertips into her pulse ragged along the side of her neck, and the solidness of her collarbone, the supporting infrastructure of her body.

She closes her eyes.

The pain had hit her all at once, screaming up her left leg, jolting her into awareness. She’d thrashed, turning the water white, fighting for the surface, but her arms were numb and her leg refused to cooperate, and the water was cloudy with terror and red red red blood.

They dragged her out in the end, still fighting, against the ocean, against herself, against her team and the surfers who swam out to save her.

The beach, the sand sticking to her wetsuit, Liam’s panicked face, Richard making phone calls, talking urgently into his cell, looming over her, the ambulance, everything smelled like bleach and death, and then the hospital and scans and scans and whispering at the end of the room and Niall holding her hand like a vice, and bandages and blood and pain pain pain, and Louis mumbling over and over, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” doctors saying, “concussion, bone fracture, blood loss,” leaving the hospital in a wheelchair, puking in the lobby, Liam’s worried hands holding back her hair…

Awake all night, Liam holding one hand, Niall holding the other, the living room dark except for the lights blinking on the TV, on the microwave, the occasional car passing spilling light through the window pooling red and white in the corners of the ceiling, everything silent but for gravel crackling under tires and the intermittent hum of the refrigerator. 

It was by no means her first spill, or even her hundredth, or her first injury by a long shot but none of the others had left her shaking in the salt breeze, afraid of the sea and what it might take from her.

Autonomy was the most important thing, always, the power to control her own future. The world was a Persian carpet and she was the magician. And suddenly, suddenly, she might not even be able to walk by herself? Louis Tomlinson would lean on no one. These were her principles and the ocean washed them out from under her like sand.

The first time she tried to surf she spent more time falling than anything else, but the first time she caught a wave and stayed upright… it was like flying over the edge of a cliff, her heart dropping into her stomach and the world cracking open like a shell. It was such a rush. Happiness, and simple, uncomplicated adrenaline.

She had such power in this body. 

She opens her eyes. Her room is in total darkness.

“Ok.” She says. “I’m ready.”

Richard breathes out, a crackle on the other end of the line, “I’m so glad. I’ll make some calls. We’ll get you entered. We’ll have to set up some interviews, stage your comeback properly. It could be great press if we do it right. But we have a lot of damage control to do. Are you ready to do this with me?”

Louis thinks of the curve of Harry’s hips, the surety of her hand on Louis’ waist. She shakes the image away and tells Richard, “Yes.”

She can barely hear over the buzzing in her ears as he says, “We’re in this together, Louis, don’t forget. I’m behind you all the way.”

“I know.” Louis makes a fist and her nails dig into her palm. “I know you are.”

…

When Harry gets back Louis can’t meet her eyes. Instead she says gaily to Liam, “I talked to Richard. WSL wants me to compete as the wildcard for the season.”

Liam takes a step forward. She’s so clearly assessing Louis’ expression, testing her mood. What Louis feels is nothing. The excitement will come later. The fear, the shame, the anger the joy. Right now she is empty and she stretches out her smile because this is what she wants. “I’m going back, Liam. I’m competing. I’m fucking competing for the world championship. I’m doing it.”

Liam drops her bag of groceries and comes over to wrap her arms around Louis. “I’m so proud of you, babe. I’m so happy.”

“What’s a wildcard?”

Louis turns to Harry. Rationally she knows she is not angry with Harry. But Harry is smiling brilliantly in the dim kitchen lights, and her lips are the color of raspberries and the memory of the peaceful afternoon they just spent together is too fresh in Louis' mind. Louis wants to punch her in the face. 

Rationally she should be angry with Richard. Rationally she should be angry with herself.

Fuck that, she’s both of those things but she’s angry with Harry too and everything about the sight of her unloading groceries onto Louis kitchen table and her hair tumbling over her shoulder and her patient expression while she waits for a response is unbearable. “Fucking Google it.” She mutters, and crosses to the couch so she doesn’t have to see the look in Harry’s eyes.

Behind her she can hear Liam explaining, “It’s when the WSL, that’s the World Surf League, picks a surfer, just one in women’s surfing, who couldn’t qualify because of an injury usually, and lets them compete in the championship tour.”

“That sounds like a big deal.”

“Yeah, definitely. She's going on tour. She could be the women's surfing World Champion.”

Louis tips her head back against the couch. She’s going back. She’s fucking going back. She can’t tell what emotion is causing the thrumming in her veins, but her heart feels like it’s being set alight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, kids, updates are gonna be kinda sporadic for a while, I have finals and shit, but don't worry, I know where this story is going and we'll get there in the end.


	7. Chapter 7

Niall calls her at three in the morning and just screams incoherently in Louis’ ear for a minute. “I’m hanging up,” Louis warns loudly. 

“No, Lou—”

Louis hangs up.

Niall calls back. Louis lets it go to the answering machine. Niall calls again. This time Louis picks up and rolls over onto her back to stare at the darkened ceiling above her bed. “Niall it’s the middle of the night. I was sleeping.”

“No you weren’t.”

Louis blows out a long breath between her lips. “No, I wasn’t. What do you want?”

“Liam texted me that you got picked this season’s wildcard? And you said yes? Louis you’re going back? You’re doing it? Louis why didn’t you CALL ME RIGHT AWAY?”

Louis holds the phone away from her ear. “Niall do you have anything intelligent to say or can I hang up?”

“LOUIS TOMLINSON YOU BEAUTIFUL BITCH I’M SO PROUD.”

Louis hangs up. 

The phone rings. Louis jams her thumb into the green button. “Niall you fucking fucker.”

“I’m sorry I promise I won’t yell. I’m just really happy for you. I’m really proud of you babe.”

Louis slings her arm over her face and sighs. “Thanks.”

“I’m here, you know? I’ll be with you the first time you go out again.”

Louis takes a deep breath. She feels her lungs constrict around a sob. She swallows. She will not cry. “I know.”

“Are you happy?” 

“I’m not really sure what I’m feeling. I think I will be happy.”

“Do you want to talk about me instead?”

“Yes.”

Niall’s laugh is summer sun, and blurry daze of being drunk and happy, and the first sip of tea when it’s almost too hot to drink. When Niall rings off, at half four, after ranting about her new strawberry shampoo, and this sushi restaurant she’s just discovered—“oh my god, their nigiri is like a religious experience”—Louis feels loads lighter. She rolls over and falls asleep as the sun peers over the horizon and paints the ceiling of her bedroom in stripes of pink and gold.

…

Harry is in her kitchen when she gets up.

Harry is in her kitchen and she’s holding a spatula and she points it sternly at Louis and says, “Get out of my kitchen.”

Louis rubs sleep out of one eye and squints with the other, “This is my kitchen.”

“Out! I’m making you eggy toast, for real this time, and you will not interfere.”

Louis gestures weakly at the stove, “Tea…” she says sadly.

Harry’s whole face lights up. “I’ll make you tea too. Go, go sit, I’m taking care of you.” 

This is too much. This is everything. She pauses, torn, and Harry gives her a little shove in the hip. “Sit.”

“Who let you into my house anyway?” Louis asks, sitting, as requested.

Harry’s smirk is a glorious thing. Something twists in the pit of Louis stomach. “Niall.”

“Niall doesn’t even live here. Who let Niall in? Where is Niall? Where’s Liam?”

“Slow down, babe.” Harry turns back to the stove. “Shit fuck damn, if you make me burn your eggy bread I will pin you to the floor and—”

Louis leans back in her chair, away from the picture that makes in her mind, and smugly says, “And what?”

Harry looks over. Her eyes are round and dark. “I’ll make you eat it anyway.”

“Oooh, careful with the threats there, tiger. Don’t get too wild. We have rules against violence in this household you know.” She lets the front legs of the chair smack back down on the linoleum.

“Oh?” Harry says, “What would you do to me?”

Louis’ smile drops away. This is dangerous. This is walking on a cliff and asking to fall. Her next words will be a net to catch herself, or a leap off the edge. “Nothing, I told you, we have rules against violence.”

Harry nods, “Right, of course.” She flips a piece of golden brown toast onto the spatula and waves at Louis with her other hand. “Get me a plate?”

A net. Louis doesn’t feel safer, or maybe she just doesn’t like feeling safe. She has an itchy feeling in the palms of her hands. She brings a plate to Harry. Harry looks her in the eyes and raises one eyebrow. It feels like a challenge. A gauntlet clicking against the kitchen tiles. Your move. Will you or won’t you? Louis thinks of Richard saying _they want you to compete, Louis_ and she looks at the ground.

Harry shrugs, apparently unfazed and scoops several more pieces of bread onto the plate before starting the kettle for tea. 

Louis doesn’t know what to say after that so she sits and stares at her phone until Harry puts a cup of tea in front of her, and a plate of bread in the middle of the table, before pulling up a chair. The plate on the table between them feels like a barrier. The air is too thin. Both of them are holding one end of an elastic string and stretching it thinner and thinner with every silent moment.

“So,” Harry puts one elbow on the table and rests her chin on her hand. Her nails are varnished gold. The movement sends a lock of hair tumbling over her pale shoulder. When she swallows Louis watches the movement of the lines of her throat. “Are you excited?”

“About what?”

Harry lets her hand fall to the table, stretched out to Louis. Her rings click against the wood. “About the surfing thing?” 

Louis feels her face twist into a sneer. “The surfing thing?” she repeats. “Yeah, I, mean, it’s exciting.”

“Are you nervous?”

“God,” Louis takes a piece of bread and rips it into two pieces and then three and then four. “I’m not nervous. I’m just not used to the idea. Remind me what you’re doing in my house again?”

“I made you breakfast.” Harry draws back her hand and looks down at the table. “Don’t be a dick.”

Louis closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re totally right. I’m just in a shit mood this morning.” Everything is all wrong. Louis longs to go back to the easy, good natured conversation of yesterday, or even, dangerously, the hectic blur of the nightclub. She takes a bite of toast for something to do and lets out an involuntary moan. “Oh my god, you’re right. Harry. Shit. This is so good. God, you’re so good.”

Harry flushes pink and prods at her bread with her fork. “Really?”

“Yeah, god,” Louis scoops up another bite and covers her mouth as she says, “this is better than sex.”

Harry looks at her for a second too long before clearing her throat and looking down. “Well, I’m sorry, you must be having some awfully boring sex.”

“Hmm,” Louis chews and considers this. It’s been awhile since she had sex at all, actually. “Well,” her good cheer is a little forced this time, “not if I can help it.”

“Oh no?” Harry leans in across the table which makes her shirt slip and reveal the curve of her cleavage. Louis is still distracted by this when Harry whispers, “What are you into then?”

Louis nearly chokes. “What?”

“Well,” Harry leans back and innocently widens her eyes, “You know, what are you into? Sexually, I mean.”

Liam seems be developing a habit of walking in on Harry and Louis just before Louis does something she’ll probably regret. Bless Liam. Also fuck her, because come on. She stumbles into the kitchen now, rubbing her eyes, and bumps her hip on the doorway. “Why does it smell so good? Who’s cooking in our kitchen? Oh, hey, Harry, wow, thanks for breakfast, mate.”

“Hey, it could have been me who cooked.” Louis says, not looking at Harry, and ignoring the pounding of her heart.

Liam just laughs, grabs a piece of toast, and leans her butt against the counter, still laughing. “Yeah, maybe if it smelled like burnt rubber I’d believe that. So, how are you, Harry?”

“I’m well, how are you?” 

Liam doesn’t get a chance to answer because Niall comes into the kitchen just then wearing nothing but a towel and casually opens the fridge.

Louis looks at Liam, who shrugs. “Niall,” Louis says, “what the fuck?”

Niall takes a bottle of orange juice out of the fridge and inspects it, before taking a long swallow straight from the bottle. “I was taking a shower,” she says, turning to face them, “didn’t you hear the water running?”

“Don’t you have a shower in your own house?” Louis says, while Liam noiselessly pulls a mug out of a cupboard and hands it to Niall.

Niall takes it. “Thanks, mate. And yes, I do have a shower.” She pours herself a cup of juice and replaces the bottle in the fridge.

“Your shower works I assume?”

“Yep. Ooh, eggy bread. Wow, Harry, this is delicious.”

Louis can feel a sulk coming on. “Why does everyone assume Harry made breakfast?”

Niall gestures at Harry with her piece of bread, “She’s the only one who likes to cook. Also, I’m the one who invited her over, and she told me she was gonna make breakfast.”

“Why did you invite her over here? This isn’t your house, Niall. And why couldn’t you shower at home?”

“Well,” Niall shrugged, “I was here, why go all the way home to shower?”

“Okay,” Louis waves her hands, “You know what, I don’t care.”

What she really wants to know is why Niall invited Harry over, but she thinks she already knows the answer to that question and she’s not going to ask it in front of Harry. Instead she decides to cut to the chase. “So how about that tour, Harry?”

Harry blinks at Louis, “What?”

“God, don’t look at me like that.”

Harry blinks again. Niall is watching them like she’s at an especially interesting footie match, her toast halfway to her mouth, and Liam just looks confused. “Like what?” Harry says.

Louis shifts in her seat and waves one hand vaguely, “You know, with your eyes all like huge and green—yeah never mind. So, how about it?” 

“A tour.”

“Yes.”

“With you.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Uh, really?” There's no reason for Louis to be surprised, after all, Harry came over this morning apparently just to see Louis, but she is surprised that Harry would want to keep hanging out, just the two of them, since Louis so obviously isn't at her best right now.

Harry stands, “Yeah, anything you say. Except we have to stop at my house first so I can change.”

Louis mind hooks on the _anything you say_. How much does Harry mean that? Louis shakes her head and says,“But you’re already dressed.”

“Ah.” Harry looks thoughtfully down at her frayed mini shorts and t-shirt. “But you see, this is my ‘going over to a hot girls house at the crack of dawn to make her breakfast’ outfit. I need a ‘touring Hawaii with a hot girl’ outfit.”

“Um…” Louis generously grants herself a moment to get over the ‘hot girl’ comment, swallows once, and says, “Okay.”

Niall claps her hands. Louis had honestly kind of forgotten she was there. “Good luck.” Her and Liam follow them onto the porch and watch as they get into the car. Liam waves. Niall puts her hands to her mouth and calls, “Be safe! Have her home by ten!”

Harry tips her head back against the seat and laughs and Louis has to force herself to look away and take a deep breath because Harry is so beautiful with the sun catching gold in her hair and making her eyelashes throw shadows across her cheekbones.

“Let’s go,” Harry says, “sweep me off my feet, Louis Tomlinson.”

Louis engages the clutch and grins. Today is promising to be another Harry filled day. Louis decides to ignore that fact that she's beginning to judge the quality of her days by how much Harry they have in them and merely says, “I’ll do my best.”

…

Richard calls again that night to brief Louis on the championship tour schedule and she goes out onto the porch to get some privacy from the other four girls who seem to have all decided that Liam and Louis’ house is the place to get together. 

They spend about an hour discussing plane tickets and where she’ll stay during each event, and then, as it always does, the conversation veers into territory Louis really doesn’t want to discuss. “I hope you remember that issue I brought up with you in our previous conversations?”

Louis is so tired. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “If by ‘issue’ you mean Liam Payne than yes, I do, and I hope you remember that I told you, truthfully, that I’m not dating her.”

She can’t see Richard but she can picture him folding his hands neatly and superiorly on his desk as he addresses his mobile, on speakerphone of course because that leaves his hands free to do other things, like be folded neatly and superiorly. “Well, perhaps you also remember that I told you it isn’t what is actually happening that matters, it’s what the public thinks is happening.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Let’s not relive the whole conversation, okay?” God knows once was more than enough.

“Well, the point I wanted to get to was, you’ll be leaving for Australia in a week,” here she pictures him flipping through his Louis planner and pursing his lips, “and I want you to act with restraint until then.”

Louis tilts her head back against the head of the chair. “You mean don’t act like a predatory lesbo, or be spotted in the general vicinity of other females?”

“I just mean act with discretion. Don’t give the newspapers any more fuel for the fire.”

“Ah yes, the big gay fire.” Lois crosses her legs. “You know what I think is weird?”

“Please do share.”

“Well, society is so hetero, they all go out of their way to see straightness in every action. I mean have you seen Taylor Swift and Lorde? But no one calls them gay, all the articles are about how touching it is to see the depths of female friendship. But then for some reason in my case everyone is ready to be the newspaper that cried lesbian?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Louis,” Richard says, sounding like he knows exactly what he wants to tell her, “but these are the circumstances that we have to work with. The public is reacting very well to the news that you’ll be competing, it seems your fans haven’t forgotten you, but they are tentative, some of them. We want to build you a rock solid image as you go up to compete at the first event.”

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re done listing my failings can you skip to the part where you ask me to do something that makes me feel morally disgusting?”

There’s a long heavy sigh on the other end of the phone, but apparently he doesn’t know how to argue with that because he simply says, “I want you to have a fake relationship.”

She knew this was coming. She knew it was. He’d been hinting at it for ages. She expected it, she even thought she was ready to tell him no. So why does her heart feel like it’s just dropped with a splash into the region of her stomach? “Uh huh…”

“Just until the air clears. It will give the gossip mill something to churn about other than your accident.”

Just now Louis sort of feels she’d rather have the accident all over again than continue this conversation. “A fake relationship?”

“Yes.”

Louis takes a deep breath of the cold night air. From here she can just barely smell the salt breeze coming in from the sea. Louis’ first love, Niall called it. She blows the breath out. “Do you have someone in mind or am I allowed to pick the lucky person who will be torn apart by the tabloids and photographed every time he exits a building?”

Richard sounds very official and self-important as he says, “His name is Arthur. I’ve talked to his agent. He’s an amateur surfer, but he’s struggling up the surfing ladder, to be honest, so the relationship will help him earn publicity.”

It’s just like Richard to kill two birds with one convenient stone. “How thoughtful of you.”

“You’ll meet him in Australia.”

One week. She’ll be in Australia in one week, and she’ll have to be ready to surf again, and ready to pretend to be in love with a man she’s never seen. “Do I get any say in this?”

“Let me ask you another question, which I suspect has the same answer. Do you want your surfing comeback to be a failure?”

Richard has a remarkable talent for making Louis feel like she’s about four years old again. She massages her forehead with the fingers of one hand. A throbbing pain has started up behind her left temple. “No.”

“Because the cracks are all there.”

This is where Louis refuses. This is where she tells Richard she’s gay and happy with it. This is where she tells Richard that she wants to publicly come out of the closet. Instead she says, “I can’t wait to meet him. Arthur, eh? Does he come with twelve knights? Because I think Niall’s really on the lookout for her Lancelot and sometimes Tinder just won’t cut it. Actually, you what just occurred to me? I should tell her to hire an agent to arrange all of her hookups.” 

“Goodbye, Louis.”

“A pleasure as always, Richard.” Louis says, her voice syrupy sweet, and then she hangs up the phone and slams the side of her fist into the arm of the chair. “Fuck!”

Liam yells from inside, “You alright, Lou?”

Louis gets up and flings open the door. “I’m spectacular. I’m going to Australia in a week for the first event.”

Harry frowns at her. “That’s good isn’t it? Why are you angry?”

Louis lets the door slam shut behind her. She glowers. “I’m not fucking angry.”

“Yeah, I’ll say, you look right chuffed.”

“No one asked you, Niall.”

“Don’t be rude to Niall.” Zayn says mildly.

Louis spins on her. “Why? Are you fucking her now? What about Liam? Or maybe you all have some vile threesome going on you forgot to mention to me?”

Zayn doesn’t look happy but her voice is level as she says, “Or maybe I’m not fucking anyone, and I just think you shouldn’t be an asshole.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to bed.” She can feel all their eyes on her as she walks to the hall and at last she turns in the doorway and says, “Look, I’m really sorry. I’m just nervous is all.” She says it to everyone, but she's looking at Harry.

It's Niall who stumbles to her feet, and bounces over to Louis' side “Hey, it’s okay. You said you leave in a week, right? I’ll practice with you every day until then. We’ll have you ship shape in no time.”

Louis is spending far too much time these days feeling like she’s about to cry. “What would I do without you?”

“Absolutely crumble, I suspect. Luckily we don’t have to consider that possibility because here I am.” Niall gives her a hug. “You’re sure you’re alright?” she mutters in Louis’ ear.

Louis nods, holding Niall tightly and whispers, “We can talk later, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Niall let’s go and turns to the rest of the group. “So, are we going out?”

Harry says, “Yeah, come on, Louis, come out with us.”

Louis looks down. She remembers Harry's bright eyes in the dark the last time they all went out together, and her golden sun kissed skin earlier today. “Nah, I better not.” 

Harry looks torn. “Well… I could stay with you.”

“Oh no! I mean, thanks, but I’m just gonna go to bed I think. I want to get some rest so I can start practice early.”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry looks down and raps her knuckles causally against the table. “Sure, of course.” When she looks back up she’s smiling, but there’s disappointment in her eyes. “I had fun hanging out today. See you around, Louis. Maybe.” She goes out to the porch, and Zayn goes with her, after giving Louis a searching look.

Liam and Niall look at each other. “You’re sure you’re okay?” Liam says.

“Yes, mum,” Louis rolls her eyes. “Go on, have fun, I’ll be here when you get back.”

So they go, finally, Niall yelling back, “I’ll call you in the morning, babe,” and Louis makes herself a cup of tea and goes to bed. She’s still awake when Liam comes home, though, and she can hear the door slam, and voices whispering. She doesn’t answer when Liam taps on her door and a few minutes later she can hear giggling coming from Liam’s room. Louis rolls over and puts her pillow over her head, but it isn’t enough to block the sounds coming through the thin walls, and it still takes two hours for her to fall asleep. 

…

Over the next six days, as promised, Niall coaches Louis back into the ocean. It’s a good thing Niall is akin to a saint, because if Louis was Niall she would long ago have given up on herself. Louis can be a bitch, is the thing.

“It’s okay, Louis.”

“You’re a bitch, and a whore, and your mother was a cow.”

“Okay, Louis.”

“You’re a fucker and I hate you.”

“I’m not going to be mean to you just so that you'll feel justified in not doing what I say, and continue being so annoying that I finally leave you here alone, languishing in the sand.”

“I’m gonna punch you. Are you gonna put up with this kind of abuse?”

“Louis. Remember why we’re here?”

Louis makes a show of paying no attention to Niall. “I’m sorry, I’m actually really busy.”

“You’re literally just digging a tiny hole in the sand.”

“Well, actually, I’m glad you asked. You see actually this hole may look small, but it has great emotional depth.”

“So it’s you. Except this is a hole in the sand and you’re an asshole.”

“Ha!” Louis points at Niall triumphantly, “I got you to be mean to me.”

“We’re all very proud, Lou. Can I just say one thing before you start your victory dance?”

Louis folds her sand covered hands sacrosanctly in her lap, “I suppose.”

Niall leans close and whispers, “Australia. One week.”

“Niaaaalllll.” Louis flops backwards against the sand. The sky above her is a perfect pale blue dome. It’s a beautiful day. The breeze runs soft fingers through Louis’ hair. The sun shines through a halo of gauzy clouds. It’s cold enough to give the air a bite, and it smells like an incoming storm.

It’s just the kind of weather Louis used to love. The waves are extra reckless and the beaches are emptied of tourists, and everything feels dangerous and melancholy and like anything could happen.

Niall stands up. “I’m going to get ice cream, when I come back you are going in to those waves or you are calling Richard and telling him you can’t compete, okay?”

“Niall, what did I do to deserve such cruelty?”

“Do you want me to get you anything?”

Louis closes her eyes and casts one arm dramatically over her face. “No, I’ll just be here considering my fate.”

“Have fun.”

Louis mutters a couple curses under her breath and waits until she’s sure Niall is gone before opening her eyes and sitting up. One week. She can do it.

Self-pity is a vile thing. The way it creeps, like a mold. And fear is worse, like vines growing up through your lungs until you can’t breathe, twining around your brain stem until you can’t remember why you were afraid in the first place and all that’s left is the ice in your chest.

If Louis has learned anything it’s that the scariest things in life are the most worthwhile, and the things she hasn’t done because she was too scared to are the ones she most regrets missing out on.

By the time Niall gets back Louis has given herself a really stellar pep talk, if she does say so herself. The first things she says is, “I’m ready,” and the first thing Niall says is, “Harry thinks you have nice thighs.”

Louis squeaks. “What?”

“Harry. You remember her.” Niall is smirking, “Tall, long curls, green eyes, dances with her hands above her head like she’s about four years old.”

Louis glances toward the ice cream stand at the other end of the beach, and then quickly looks away. “What did she say?”

“She thinks you have nice thighs.” Niall takes a step back and grins, “Did you say you were ready?”

Louis casts one glance back toward the stand and grimaces. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Niall leans down to pick up her board, “So,” she begins conversationally, “Do you think you’ll top or bottom?”

“You cunt!” Niall skips away down the beach, giggling, and Louis grabs up her board and races after her.

When she reaches the salt water she stops. It washes over her feet, cold and tingling. It beckons to her; come and lose yourself. It’s like returning to a mistress you remembered angry and cruel, to find her coquetting, claws hidden behind her skirts. Louis’ chest is tight with pointless terror, but she feels a blaze of determination start up from her palms. “Let’s fucking go.” She says, only partly to herself. And she has to stop herself from looking over her shoulder to see if Harry is watching.

They surf all day, and all the next day. On Wednesday Liam comes along to watch, and cheer Louis on like a proud mum, and on Friday, when the sky goes gray with the imminence of evening, Harry and Zayn shut down the ice cream stand and join the audience.

When night is nearly upon them all, Louis leaves the waves behind and goes to join them. Liam puts up her hand to greet Louis with a fist bump, and Niall says, “Well, Lou, what’ve you got to say for yourself?”

Louis reaches up and lets her hair down. It sends fresh rivulets of water trickling over her shoulders and Louis grins, “I say, the Australian ocean better watch out.”

Zayn is leaning lazily against her forearms in the sand and she lifts her chin, “There is no Australian ocean.” She looks at Louis through eyes that are squinted almost all the way shut. “It’s true what they say about jocks. They’re pretty, but they’re not very smart.”

“Hey!”

Zayn’s eyes crinkle up even more when she smiles. “What are you going to do, drip on me?”

“I’d beat the living shit out of you, but I’m much too tired.” Louis lets herself fall to the sand, and twists her head to look up at Zayn, “I’ll give you a pass this once.”

“Aw, well I appreciate that.”

For a moment all of them are silent, looking up at the sky as it darkens and reveals a glittering net of stars. At last Liam says, “So when are we leaving exactly? For Australia?”

Louis twitches. “What?”

“Niall and I are coming with, obviously. When have we ever not?”

“Uhm,” Louis looks between Niall and Liam, “Uh, Sunday morning. The flight leaves at six.”

“In the morning?” Niall sounds like someone just shat in her beer. “Dear god.”

“Perfect, I’ll have just enough time for a morning run—” 

“Liam!”

There’s the sound of a scuffle. Louis doesn’t raise her head to look. When Liam speaks next she sounds like she doing so with her head held under someone’s arm. “I’m kidding.” A pause, “I’ll probably only have time for half my usual run—Niall, stop it!”

There’s silence again for a time, interrupted only by the flaring noise as Zayn lights a cigarette. She offers it noiselessly to Louis, who accepts.

She must be touched in the head. That’s the only explanation for what happens next. Going back to surfing wasn’t enough, Louis has a death wish and is insistently courting danger, because she blows the smoke out in a thin stream, turns to Harry, who’s been quiet all day, and says, “What about you?”

Harry’s head turns. “Me?” she repeats slowly.

“Yeah. You’re always going on about traveling. Come with us. We’ll be in California, Brazil, France. You can work on your tan, watch me surf, buy me expensive drinks every time I win an event.”

“But I thought—” Louis can’t make out Harry’s expression, but she sounds hesitant, “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Avoiding you? Why would I be avoiding you?" She has been avoiding Harry of course, all week. There have been no more sunny tours over the islands best beaches, or cozy breakfasts alone in Louis and Liam's flat. Louis twists her head around. "Hey, what about you, Zayn? Come lay on beaches? Keep Liam company? Richard is paying for us already, so you’d just have to buy plane tickets.”

Zayn takes the cigarette when Louis holds it out, and takes a long drag. “Whatever.” She says.

So early Sunday morning finds all five of them in a messy little line in front of the airport. Zayn leaning against her baggage and looking half asleep, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her perfect lips, leather jacket draped over her shoulders; Liam looking bright eyed, neatly combed and ready for anything; Niall who looks even worse off than Zayn, and appears to have actually fallen asleep in her wrinkled golf shirt; and Harry, smiling sleepily, and looking better than anyone has a right to look in boots, black skinny jeans, and a beanie shoved haphazardly over her curls. And at the end of the row, Louis, who hasn’t had a wink of sleep all night and is ready to punch someone.

At the gate Harry takes Louis’ hand and rubs her thumb absently along the back of it. “You’ll be fine,” she leans down to whisper in Louis’ ear, her voice still not rid of its morning grittiness. And Louis finds herself smiling all the way through the airport and onto the plane that will carry her back to her surfing career. They watch the sun rise outside the window as the plane lifts off. Niall and Zayn have already fallen back asleep, and Liam is in another row of seats, but Harry squeezes Louis’ hand and smiles, and points outside at the strip of gleaming gold that bleeds light into the morning sky.


	8. Chapter 8

The flight is endless. Louis can only thank god she’s legal to buy alcohol. “These things are ridiculous.” She tells Harry, turning one of the tiny airplane bottles of whiskey over in her palm. “Like, how much do you think is in this? Two shots?”

“I dunno.” Harry reaches out for one. “May I?”

“You know, it’s illegal to buy alcohol for a minor.” Louis moves the row of bottles away from Harry. “I could be arrested for aiding and abetting.”

Harry laughs, “For what-ing?”

Louis waves a hand dismissively. “Never mind.” She hands Harry a bottle and adds, “I never was very good with the whole law thing.”

“Yeah.” Harry takes an impressively long swallow of whiskey, staring at Louis. She clears her throat when she’s finished and says, “You do have that whole anti-authority thing going for you. Bring the system down whether it needs it or not.”

“You make me sound like James Dean.” Louis says, amused.

“All you’re missing is a leather jacket. Hey,” she points at Louis, “you could borrow Zayn’s.”

“Oh no.” Louis emphatically shakes her head. “I’m never going to borrow clothes from Zayn she’s too gorgeous. It wouldn’t be the same on me and that would make me sad.”

Harry smirks. She raises her bottle to her lips but doesn’t take a sip. Louis tracks the movement and watches the way the mouth of the bottle sinks into Harry’s full lower lip. When Harry’s pink tongue darts out and catches a drop of liquid slithering down the bottle neck Louis is sure she’s teasing, and drags her gaze away to look out the window at the ocean of clouds they’re flying over.

Harry’s voice sounds in her ear, rough and much too close. “So you don’t like being told what to do?”

Louis turns her head. Harry is barely five inches away and her eyes are dark and shiny. So here they are, once again, dancing on a knife edge. Louis leans back a little. “Not really, no.” and then, because Harry looks a little disappointed by Louis’ matter of fact response, she grins and opens another bottle of whiskey, “Here’s to doing whatever the fuck you want.” She says, tapping it against Harry’s.

Harry’s lips slowly curve up. “Here’s to doing what you’re told,” she presses her lips together and adds, “sometimes.”

On the third bottle Harry asks Louis about the accident. Louis is just drunk enough not to have control over the emotions that show up on her face. Harry backtracks in a blurry voice, “Sorry, sorry, you don’t have to tell me—”

“No, it’s okay.” She looks into Harry’s expectant face and sighs. “I’ve had minor injuries before, you know? You don’t get where I am without taking risks you maybe shouldn’t’ve.”

Harry says softly, “What happened?”

“Well,” Louis lifts one shoulder, “I was, um,” she squints at Harry, “I was surfing the barrel and the wave broke in front of me and I should have been able to climb the foam or like, at least remembered how to fall proper. But, uh, I made a mistake." she shrugs, "I totally wiped out and my board, the uh, the fin hit me in the leg and tore it open above my ankle. And I hit my head on the bottom, did you know if you hit sand at high force it’s just like hitting concrete?” Louis takes several gulps of whiskey and allows Harry to clumsily pat her knee. “It shouldn’t’ve been a big deal, really, I mean, surfers get injured,” she shrugs, “it’s part of the game. The worst part was how scared I was, and how stupid that made me feel. Like I was the only thing holding me back, but I wasn't even in control of myself. I couldn't stop being scared, I was just frozen, helpless. That was the worst part, I think. I mean I'll have to stop surfing someday anyway, but the idea that I was helpless? Fuck.” Louis makes herself laugh, and it sounds forced, “Sorry, this shit makes me way too chatty.” She taps one of the little bottles and grimaces.

Harry says, “I like it.”

“What?”

“I like it. You’re not all on the defensive.”

“Yeah, well, many people do like me better when I’m drunk. More fun, less trouble. Easy and low maintenance, you just have to watch that I vomit in the toilet and not on the floor.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

But Louis feels yucky and exposed and the liquor buzz is starting to fade just a bit. She drains another tiny bottle. She nudges Harry in the side with her elbow. “What about you? What’s your dirty little secret?”

Harry taps her nails against the seat back tray. “ _My_ dirty little secret? Somehow I don’t think getting hit with a surfboard constitutes a dirty little secret.” 

Louis snickers at Harry’s slurred pronunciation. “What’s that? Con-shi-shoots? Conshishuts a dirty little shercret?”

“Shut up,” Harry is smiling, eyes lit up, “I don’t have any dirty little secrets. I’m like a nun.”

“A nun? What are you talking about?”

Harry twists and her thigh falls against Louis’ knee. “I’m incorruptible.”

“Oh I doubt that.”

Harry snorts and leans back thoughtfully. “I don’t know. What do you want to know? I have a sister and, uh, a mum...”

“Woah,” Louis makes an impressed face, “You have a mum? Wow, that is a dirty little secret. I’d keep that under wraps if I was you, you don’t want it getting out that you have a _mum_. I mean, to each her own I guess, but really, that’s just embarrassing.”

Harry says, without heat, “Fuck off, mate. Let’s see, I used to work as a baker.”

“I think you’ve mentioned that one before, once or twice—”

“Shh, don’t speak when I’m speaking.”

Louis gives Harry a solid ten seconds before clearing her throat meaningfully. “You’re not speaking, am I allowed to talk?”

“No, I’m gathering my thoughts.” A crinkle has appeared between Harry’s eyebrows, she doesn’t look like she’s enjoying whatever thoughts she’s gathering.

“Okay,” a pause, “how long is this gonna take exactly—”

"Why have you been avoiding me?"

Whatever Louis was expecting, it wasn't this. She frowns. "I told you, I haven't been avoiding you, I've just been busy getting ready for the CT."

"It's not the way I've been acting?" Harry holds up her little bottle as if this has something to do with what she's trying to say.

"Um, I don't--"

Harry interrupts, “You think Zayn is hot.”

“What?” Louis blinks, “Yeah, I mean, I’m not blind, am I?”

Harry makes a face, “So that’s it? That’s all?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if she kissed you?”

“Uh, well, I’d be worried that she was cheating on my best friend with me…”

“So you wouldn’t kiss her back?”

“No. Did I mention the cheating on my best friend thing?”

“So you’re not attracted to her?”

“She’s gorgeous but, uh,” Louis looks at Harry’s perfect pink pouting lips and wide green eyes, “she’s not really my type, you know?”

“Okay, sure. That’s okay, I get it.” Harry looks down at her hands, when she looks up again she has an unconvincing smile plastered on.

Louis has the sense something important just happened but she has no idea what. “I’m sorry? Do you want me to be attracted to Zayn?”

“No.”

“Then what? What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Harry is either a terrible liar, or not trying at all, but Louis doesn’t know what else to say so she leaves it at that.

They spend the rest of the plane ride discussing irrelevant topics and Louis pretends she can’t tell that Harry’s disappointed. But eventually Harry’s disappointment fades and Louis is caught up all over again in her adorable enthusiasm. For some reason Harry seems annoyed when Louis leans forward and brushes a strand of hair out of Harry’s face, Louis gets the message, she doesn’t try to touch Harry again, but she doesn’t understand. One minute Harry is all up in Louis’ space and making unsubtle sexual innuendos, and then the next minute she’s nothing but sharp edges.

The result is that when they land Harry and Louis are both mildly tipsy, and pretending very hard not to be annoyed.

Louis attaches herself quickly to Niall when they get off the plane, and out of the corner of her eye she can see Harry doing the same thing to Zayn. Niall is watching Harry too, and she says, “What did you say to her?”

Louis leads the way toward baggage claim. “I didn’t say anything to her.”

“Well you must have, otherwise what changed?”

“I swear, we just had a perfectly casual conversation. If I did something to make her mad I don’t know what it was. I mean, I flirted with her a little, I don’t know, that seemed to make her upset. Maybe she has issues with internalized homophobia.”

Niall shakes her head, “Oh my god, Louis.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Grab your fucking bag, and let’s go. I’m starving and I need a nap.”

The girls’ luggage all appears at about the same time and as Louis is wrestling her bag onto the ground she says, “You slept almost the whole flight.”

“Yeah, well,” Niall, deceptively slight, apparently has no trouble lifting her bags off the conveyor belt. She sets them down and watches Louis struggle. “That was plane sleep, okay. Ten hours of plane sleep converts to, like, one and a half hours of real sleep.”

Louis gets her bag off the belt only to have it slip out of her grasp and land, with an alarming crack, on her foot. “Jesus Christ, motherfucker,”

Someone’s palm lands on the small of her back and a husky voice says, “Hey, you okay?”

Louis hates Harry Styles, she really does. “Yeah,” she says, not looking round, “I’m fine. I'm great, really bloody grand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was really short and painful but hey, life is cruel. The next one will be longer, I promise, but honestly probably just as evil :)


	9. Chapter 9

Louis has changed her mind. She doesn’t hate Harry Styles, she hates everything in the world. Somehow in the dizzy blur of the plane flight, and how weird Harry was acting, she’d forgotten what was waiting for her in Australia, but Richard meets them in front of the hotel and wastes no time reminding Louis. 

“You’ll meet him tonight,” he says, steering her toward the door, leaving the cab driver to deal with the bags, and completely ignoring the other four girls climbing wearily onto the sidewalk. “Meet me in the hotel restaurant for dinner at about seven.” He pats her shoulder, and gives her a rare smile. “I’ll let you get settled, we can talk over dinner.” He walks away.

Louis watches him go. “Fucking—” she mutters, and goes back to hold the door for her friends. 

It’s a pretty classic high rise hotel on the beach. Louis can smell the salt in the air coming through the door. The lobby is lovely, softly lit, with collections of dark red and yellow couches and lots of plants, and a huge sweeping staircase leading up. It’s understated and comfortable enough to seem classy. 

The check in counter is a long brown marble affair and the lady behind it nods in recognition when Louis gives her name, “Yes, let’s see. Tomlinson… Here it is. We have two rooms booked for you, a single for Miss Tomlinson and Miss Styles, and a double for Miss Payne, Miss Malik, and Miss Horan.”

“You’re kidding.” Louis says. She looks over her shoulder. Niall and Liam are piling all of the bags on to a couple of trolleys, Zayn has disappeared, and Harry is charming the bell boy. She’s taken off her beanie, and her hair is a mess. As if she senses Louis watching her she turns, and runs a hand through the tangle of curls, rings catching the light.

Louis turns back around hurriedly. “Don’t you have another room? Anything at all? I’ll sleep in a broom closet if I have to.”

Once the desk lady stops looking surprised she makes an apologetic face. “I’m very sorry. We’re all booked at the moment, what with the surfing championship taking place this week. I can try and pull some strings but I don’t know that it would do any good…”

“No, it’s fine, don’t worry, it’s absolutely fine.” 

“If you’re sure…” Desk lady says hesitantly.

“I’m sure. Thank you so much.” She takes the keys over to the girls and hands them out. “Let’s see, Harry, you don’t mind sharing with Zayn, do you? And that leaves me, Liam and Niall in the double room. That works, right?”

Harry accepts the keys and smiles brightly. “Thanks, Lou,” she says, and prances off, presumably to find Zayn.

Niall and Liam immediately turn on Louis. “Okay,” Liam says, “What’s going on with you two?”

Louis says, very innocently, “I don’t know what you mean.” And as soon as they get to their room she hurls herself across one of the snowy white beds and pretends to fall asleep. She pretends so well that she actually does fall asleep. Some indeterminate time later Niall shakes her awake and says, “Really?”

Louis rolls over and rubs her eyes. “Niall, wha—”

“Harry just dropped by,” Niall says. Her tone is accusatory, but for some reason she looks amused. “Apparently Richard phoned her room looking for you.”

Louis sits bolt upright. “Shit, what time is it?”

“Seven fifteen. Louis—” Louis almost falls of the bed. She staggers over to the bathroom and flips on the light. Niall follows her doggedly. “Listen to this, apparently Richard was expecting you to be in Harry’s room and he was very confused when you weren’t there. Any idea what that’s about?”

Louis scuttles back and forth across the bedroom to fetch her toiletries from her bag, and then run a brush through her hair a few times and apply some light makeup while looking in the bathroom mirror. “No idea at all. How do I look?”

“Gay,” Niall says.

Louis heaves a deep sigh. “Just what I was going for,” she mumbles, annoyed, going back to her bag and pulling out a pile of shirts.

“Yes, well, speaking of gay—”

“Oh my god, please shut up.” Louis finally dumps her entire wardrobe on the bed and starts rifling through it.

“You switched the rooms around so you wouldn’t have to be alone with Harry!”

“You’re a genius. Help me dress like a straight person.”

“Um. What?”

“Ug, nevermind. Maybe Liam has something I can borrow.”

“Okay, no, no, no,” Niall grabs Louis’ shoulders as she starts to walk away, “not if you wanna look straight. Here, wear this shirt, and uh,” Niall perches on the bed to pick through Louis’ clothes pile, “yeah, perfect, this skirt.”

“Thanks, Ni,” Louis says, stripping off her travel clothes, and starting to change.

Niall watches her with a concerned expression. “Louis, what’s going on?”

“I’m late to meet my boyfriend.”

Niall coughs, “You’re what?”

“Where’s Liam?”

“Lou, fuck’s sake, stop.” Niall stands and takes Louis’ hands to hold her still. “What’s going on?”

Louis makes herself meet Niall’s eyes. “Nothing, Ni. We were supposed to meet Richard for dinner at seven but we’re late.” She shrugs, “It’s not very polite. Although actually I’m not sure if he meant all of us or just me. Probably just me since we’re supposed to be discussing strategy or something.”

Niall lets go of Louis hands and pulls her phone out of her pocket, “How about this, I’ll text everyone to meet us in the restaurant and if that’s not what Richard meant he can fuck right off. I mean we need to eat, right?”

“Right.”

It turns out Richard probably didn’t mean all of them considering the expression on his face when they arrive in a pack, but he doesn’t say anything, just leads them over to a table.

Niall says in her cheeriest voice, which is really obscenely cheery, “Sorry we’re late, Louis was fixing her hair.”

Louis glowers at her, but is suitably distracted by Harry sitting down in the seat next to her. Harry has apparently put aside whatever was bothering her on the plane, but, while she still flirts charmingly with everything else that walks on two legs, she’s merely amicable to Louis. Louis misses it a bit, but mostly she’s glad Harry’s not angry.

Richard is seated on Louis other side and clearly on his best behavior. This is the man Louis first met, and she’s reminded that he’s not a bad man, just a business man, and they can look awfully similar when viewed from a distance. “Liam,” he’s saying now, “I’ve heard a lot about you. How did you and Louis meet?”

Liam looks like she rather doubts Louis has spent much time gossiping about her friends with Richard but she says pleasantly, “We worked together for a while when we were teenagers.”

“Liam was hostess and I was a waitress,” Louis adds, “but then they fired me after about two weeks. It was a really posh place and most people were horribly rude, and for some reason I just couldn’t stop being rude back.”

Richard makes a face like he knows the pain those restaurant goers had to endure. “And during those fateful two weeks you managed to become friends?”

“Well, Liam came to my rescue a few times and then she starting coming to sit with me during cigarette breaks, and uh, despite her being an angel and me being a bitch we got on pretty well.” She grins at Liam.

Richard looks like all his worst fears are being confirmed but he just says, “What about you, Miss Horan?”

Niall looks up. “Me?”

“How did you and Louis meet?”

“We went to school together. Both of us were on the footie team in high school.” Niall grins at Louis, “I was always better of course, but during our long hours at team practice I managed to instill a little of my fighting spirit in her.”

Liam snorts, “I think you might’ve have instilled a bit too well, mate.”

“It’s because she’s so small,” Niall says, nodding, “she’s too good at fighting, there’s no room for anything else.”

Louis breaks in, “I’m average height, okay? Also, Niall, we’re the same height.”

Niall shrugs, “But my charming, laid-back personality makes me seem much taller.”

“And my personality makes me seem what, exactly?”

“You’re the perfect height,” Harry says, not quite loud enough to seem as if she’s trying to join the conversation. She squeezes Louis’ thigh under the table and smiles.

It’s only because Louis is now trying to avoid everyone’s eyes that she notices the man approaching their table before he even speaks. “Louis Tomlinson? Wow, I thought I recognized you. I’m so excited you’re competing.”

“Yeah, um, thanks.”

“Oh, sorry,” the man holds his hand toward her, “Arthur Window,” so this is Arthur. He’s conventionally quite attractive, Louis supposes, with sparkling blue eyes, dark blond hair, and a rangy muscular build. He has an Australian accent, and a nice voice.

Louis shakes his hand, “Really? Window? How many jokes do you hear about that?”

“You know, you’d be surprised at the dearth of good jokes involving windows there are out there. Windows doesn’t seem to be a subject that lends itself to punch lines.”

Richard leans back in his seat, “Do you use a PC?”

“No, I have a Mac.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know, then.”

Arthur frowns at him, then shakes his head like he’s trying to rid his ears of water, “Well, Louis, it’s really nice to meet you. You’ve had an incredible career. Maybe we’ll bump into each other later?”

“Maybe. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Window.” He waves at everyone else at the table and strolls off. Louis doesn’t miss the fact that Harry is giving his retreating back an evil glare. 

For some reason this makes her feel slightly better as she sits down. She opens her menu. “Well? What are we all having?” 

Arthur is soon forgotten in the haze of wine and dinner conversation. After dinner Richard pulls her aside. Louis taps her foot and glances back at the girls as they pause by the door. She holds up a finger to let them know she’ll just be a minute and says to Richard, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Her grins at her, “Surfer Magazine wants to talk to you.”

Surfer Magazine is the foremost surfing publication in the world. As a kid Louis read almost every edition. She had a bulletin board on one wall covered in pictures she’d torn from it. She learned the lives of famous surfers in its pages, and dreamed of being in their place. A few years ago she’d been briefly interviewed as a young rising star in the world of surfing. Louis feels cautiously hopeful. If someone in the outside world, unaffiliated with Louis in any way, wants to talk to her about re-entering surfing than that means somehow it’s really happening. She tries to read his expression to see how serious this is. “They want to talk to me, or you twisted a couple of arms?”

Richard laughs. “They really want to talk to you. Ashtyn Douglas called me herself a few days ago to see if you were available for an interview.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes, of course. If they do a spread it’s exactly the kind of publicity we want, and Ashtyn is a big fan of yours, so it’s guaranteed to be positive, and even if it’s just a page or two it’ll still be good, and it will serve as your official announcement that you’re competing.”

A part of Louis wants to be annoyed at him for not asking her before confirming it with the magazine, but a rare, sensible part of her brain tells her it would do no good, and she’s happy to talk with Ashtyn anyway, so arguing is pointless. “Fine. Great. When did you schedule it for?”

“Well, Surfer has a team here reporting on the CT so it can be anytime you’re available. They want to get some shots of you practicing as well, so I’ll just give you Ashtyn’s number and you can call her and coordinate it yourself. I’d suggest you get it done tomorrow.”

“”Yeah, sure, thanks. Anything else?”

Richard schools his expression into solemnity. “I know you’re tired, and I know it’s not my business what you do behind closed doors, but do me a favor and don’t room with Liam? I’m sorry if you have some kind of feud with this Harry girl, but half the tabloids have you sleeping with Liam and I don’t need someone to see the two of you creeping into the same hotel room.”

Louis shakes her head at him, her delight at the interview fading fast. “Fine, sure.”

“I’m sorry, Louis,” Richard says. He’s looking down and fiddling with the strap of his watch. “I really think you can win this thing, and I hate to ask this of you, but I know from experience public image is incredibly important. I know it doesn’t seem like it matters, because it can’t change the way you compete, but, well,” he shrugged.

“Wow,” Louis crosses her arms. “An apology. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Don’t get used to it,” his gives her a small smile, “The media is a harsh entity, and it’s my job to prevent you from giving them gossip to work with. That means I have to be harsh too, but I am trying to help you, not like the press.” 

His face darkens every time he mentions the media. Louis has pretty much only talked to him on the phone the past several months, and before that there had never been much controversy attached to her name, so they never had to have these discussions, and she never noticed his ugly tone when discussing the press. She files this away as mildly interesting, and possibly useful. “Fine. Thanks for talking to Surfer. I’ll change the rooms around.” And she walks away without waiting for him to respond. 

Niall protests more violently then Louis. “You’re joking! I can’t share a room with these two!” she points at Liam and Zayn. Zayn has her hand in Liam’s back pocket and she smirks sleepily.

“Well,” Louis says, placating, “you don’t have to. Liam and Zayn can share and Harry and I will go with you, okay? Everyone’s happy.”

Zayn and Liam looked pleased enough, but Niall looks like she’s on the verge of protesting sharing with Harry and Louis as well, and Harry just looks confused.

“Sorry,” Louis says to Harry, “the whole forced to share a bed thing is totally overdone, but it is what it is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Louis mumbles.

God hates her.

…

After all that Niall doesn’t even come back to the room. “That little harlot.” Louis says around her toothbrush, staring down at the message from Niall on her phone that reads, _Hey, have fun alone w H! I found another bed to crash in ;)_

Harry spits out her toothpaste and tries to catch a glimpse of Louis’ screen. “I thought the word harlot went out of fashion around the same time codpieces did.”

“Well, I’m single handedly bringing it back just for Niall’s benefit.” Louis finishes brushing her teeth and rinses her mouth with mouthwash. 

As she heads back into the bedroom Harry calls after her, “What about codpieces, what’s your stance on that?”

“Good riddance. No one wants to see that, or have to picture what’s behind it.”

Harry’s laugh is an absurd cartoon laugh; _ha ha ha_. Louis hates it. She focuses on unpacking her stuff and putting it away in the birch colored wardrobes, but that doesn’t stop her from being peripherally aware that Harry is now wandering around completely naked. She mumbles, “This isn’t a strip club, you know.”

Harry looks up distractedly, giving Louis an excellent view of how her golden skin gleams across her shoulders and the dark ink there and down across her clavicle and over the soft curves of her breasts. The leaf tattoos across her hips are oddly intriguing. Louis wants to press her lips to them, stain them red with love bites. Louis tears her gaze away. The expression on Harry’s face, half lit in the dim light from the bathroom, is only mildly inquisitive, and totally unself-conscious. “What?”

Stop thinking like that, she’s off limits, Louis tells herself. “Put some clothes on for god’s sake.”

Harry puts one hand on her hip. “Don’t you like the view?” 

“Oh my god, stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“I refuse to have this conversation with you while you’re naked.”

Harry stares at her. Louis can’t read her expression because she’s turned her head a little and her face is in shadow. She says softly, “What conversation?”

“Are you listening?”

“Right, clothes, sorry.”

Harry shuts the bathroom door and takes long enough getting dressed that Louis is able to finish packing and pretend to be asleep. She doesn’t do very well this time. Harry flops down on the bed beside her and says, “I can tell you’re not asleep.”

“Are you decent?”

“Yes.”

Louis turns over. Harry has on what looks like underwear and an eensy weensy tank top. “You call that decent? Is that a shirt?” Louis asks, “Or a bra?”

Harry dimples at her. “It’s a bikini. I would have gone swimming naked but I thought you might protest.”

Louis swipes open her phone to check the time. “It’s after ten, the pool is probably closed.” 

Harry gets off the bed. “Who says we can’t sneak in?”

“Well, I’m not tired…” Louis admits.

Harry beams at her. “Let’s go.”

It’s an outdoor pool, with no fence to speak of, so they don’t even have to make an effort to get in. They race each other, giggling, across the stones to the water edge, and then skid to a halt. Louis looks down at the water, glittering blue and placid. There are lights on the tiles in the pool walls, but stone deck, with its lounge chairs and sparse artificial jungle is dark, lit only by the ambient glow of the hotel and the city behind it. She looks at Harry. Harry looks at her.

“Well?” says Harry.

Louis pushes her in.

She screams as her toes leave the deck, and hits the water with a splash, limbs pointing every direction. “You’re mean,” she says, when she comes up, but she’s smiling. She swims over to Louis and grabs hold of the edge. “It’s perfect, come in.”

It’s gloriously cool on Louis’ hot skin. She lets out a whisper of a sigh as she slips in. “Mmm,”

Harry scoots closer to Louis, still holding onto the edge. She puts her thumb on Louis collar bone. Louis holds her breath but Harry just says, “’It is what it is’?” 

Louis looks down. “Well, you can’t argue with that, can you?” Harry looks up, a question in her eyes, and Louis shrugs, “Just my way of coming to terms with the way things are, and what I can and can’t do about it.”

Harry looks thoughtful. “Huh, funny. I used to have a pair of tattoos like that.”

“You used to?”

“I kind of still do, I guess. I covered them up.” She points out an eagle tattoo on one forearm, and a bible on the other.

Louis traces the words, HOLY BIBLE inked in Harry’s skin. “Why did you cover them up?”

“It was time.” Harry says, which isn’t quite an answer but Louis lets it go. Harry carefully removes her arm from Louis grasp, and Louis lets it happen, even though the brief skin on skin contact has left her wanting more.

After they’re done swimming they steal towels from the pool house and sit by the side of the pool, dipping their toes in the water. “I like being your friend,” Harry says. She’s sitting so close her thigh is pressed against Louis’, “you’re fun.”

Louis’ heart bumps painfully. “Yeah, I’m really glad you assaulted me with your umbrella that day.”

Harry leans back and lays against the stones, gazing up into the sky. They can’t really make out the stars because of the city lights, but here and there an errant sparkle fights its way through. “Can you believe it’s only been a little over a week?”

“Sometimes friendship is like that.” Louis lies back next to Harry. “Sometimes two people just click right away.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we click.”

Louis clears her throat. “Yeah.”

“You’re not big on the emotional thing, are you?”

Louis turns her head to look at Harry and finds that Harry is already looking at her. She bites her lower lip and catches the way Harry watches the movement. Louis is so tired of being cautious. Every time her heart clatters in response to Harry’s nearness Louis has to remind herself to look away.

And Harry isn’t interested in anything more than being friends, and Louis can’t let herself be interested right now, but—looking into Harry’s eyes, dark jade in the faint blue light of the pool—she feels a shift in the atmosphere, like a string has snapped between them. 

She feels a terrible desire to lean forward and press her lips to Harry’s.

Instead she turns her head and looks away. “I love emotions,” she says, aware of an edge of irony to her voice, “They make life exciting.”

“But you don’t like talking about them.” Harry’s voice is low, a rough whisper, and for some reason the sound of it gives Louis a surprising jolt. 

She sits up and says lightly, “What is there to say?”

Harry seems to think this is funny. She laughs as she sits up. “Well? Should we go back?”

Louis nods and gets to her feet, offering a hand to Harry to help her up too. They tiptoe through the lower floor, clutching at each other in the relative dark and giggling every time one of them stumbles. Harry stops at the base of the stairs and lets go of Louis hand. She has a tiny secret smile and she says, “I’ll meet you upstairs, yeah?”

“Where are you going? Don’t leave me alone in the dark. Harry, no!” Louis pretends to fall on the stairs clutching at her heart. 

Harry just walks away and calls back, “I’ll see you soon.”

When Louis gets back to the room she changes into her pajamas, and wrings her wet hair out in a towel. She goes out onto the balcony to wait for Harry to get back. It seems like forever, but it’s only about twenty minutes later that there’s a stilted thumping on the door and Louis opens it to reveal Harry, holding two bottles of champagne in a bucket full of nice.

Louis nods her approval and points questioningly toward the balcony door. Harry follows her. “So where’d those come from?” she asks.

Harry sets the bucket on the cast iron patio table. “I flirted with the man at the bar.”

Louis comes to sit across from her. “Really? You flirted two entire bottles of champagne away from him?”

Harry tips her head to the side. She looks unbearably cocky. Something unspools in the region of Louis stomach. Harry says, smirking, “I’m very good at flirting.”

Louis shifts a little in her chair. “So? Are we gonna drink it straight from the bottle?”

“Well, I didn’t get any glasses.” Louis holds her gaze for a minute before they start to laugh. “It’s not really funny,” Harry says, gasping for air.

Louis just shakes her head and wipes an errant tears from her cheek, “It is a little,” she says, still laughing. 

In the end Harry goes back into the room and finds a pair of water glasses by the sink in the bathroom and they fill these with the sparkling gold liquid. Harry moves her chair over next to Louis, so they don’t have the table between them, and tilts her head to lay it against Louis’ shoulder. They finish one of the bottles like that, hands laced together in Louis’ lap, not speaking, just existing comfortably in each other’s space. It’s almost one in the morning when Louis reluctantly shifts her hand out of Harry’s and says, “We better get some sleep.”

Harry sighs sleepily and nods. Louis guides her into the room with a hand resting lightly on her lower back, and stows the other bottle of champagne in the fridge. Louis climbs right into bed because she’s already undressed, but Harry’s still in her bikini, and after she’s dropped it to the floor she stands for a moment in front of her wardrobe. At last she pulls on a pair of boxers and the white t shirt she had on during the flight. She smirks when she turns around and catches Louis watching her. 

Louis looks away quickly, guiltily, but she looks back when the bed rocks as Harry climbs into bed next to her.

Louis protests instantly, “But there’s another bed right over there.”

Harry pulls the covers up to her chin and squeezes her eyes shut, “Too far away, don’t like sleeping alone,” she lists, “why go over there when I’m already comfortable here?”

Once again, it’s impossible to say no to Harry. And even though Louis makes a show of grudging acquiescence, she can’t deny to herself that she likes having Harry here so close to her. Harry keeps her distance, but she does tangle her ankles with Louis’ and whispers, “Good night, Lou.”  
Louis moves her pillow into a more comfortable position. “Good night.”

Harry falls asleep before Louis, and Louis watches her, just for a minute. Very carefully she reaches out and puts her finger to Harry’s soft lower lip. Harry’s mouth opens under the touch. Quickly Louis pulls away. 

She falls asleep with the idea of Harry’s responsiveness burning in her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading <3


	10. Chapter 10

“So this was your first major injury. How did it feel to take such a long break from surfing?”

Louis takes a sip of water and thinks as she screws the cap back on the bottle. “It’s been weird, for sure. So much of my life up to that point was focused on training for the next event, and then competing in the next event, you know? I was always looking forward. I think in some ways the injury was good for me. It’s been enormously frustrating of course, but it’s allowed me to take a step back and really assess what’s important to me.”

Ashtyn nods encouragingly, smiling at her, “And what have you discovered?”

“Well, to be honest, it’s still surfing. I love it, and I don’t see myself retiring any time soon. Not to say I was considering retirement before the injury, you can’t ever really give up surfing once it gets into your blood, but this has really helped me to realize how much I love it. I’ve missed it, yeah? I didn’t realize how much I would miss it. But at the same time I feel like I can relax a little more than I used to. I know I can get through anything and come back just as strong.”

“How’s your ankle?”

Louis rotates the ankle in question. “Good as new, almost. It’s funny though, once the cast came off I was kind of expecting it to be the same as before, but you really lose an amazing amount of strength in a short amount of time just by not doing day to day movements. So yeah, it’s been a long process, but I feel confident that I’m back at 100% physically.”

“What about mentally? Are you nervous about going back to surfing?”

“Well, uh, I think that has been the biggest obstacle to getting back in the water for me.” Louis covers her mouth with a hand and forces a cough to gain time. “It was definitely hard initially, because I was nervous about re-injuring it, but I think I’m doing really well at this point. I have been surfing since the injury, and it felt fine. It’s going to take a little getting used to, but I’m just going to have to take it one step at a time.”

“How did you feel when you heard you’d been selected as this year’s wildcard?”

“I was surprised, honestly. I think everyone was surprised. I wasn’t the obvious choice, it was a pretty major injury, and no one really had any idea how my form was looking since then, so I’m kind of a gamble on the part of WSL. But once I got over the shock of it it felt amazing. Like a real vote of confidence. I’m really exciting to be able to dive back into my career and into the competition at the same time.”

“Last question, Louis. Is there anything you like to say to your fans?”

“Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for continuing to support me and believe in me while I was resting up. I won’t let you guys down. You mean everything to me, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring the trophy home this year, and when I do, it’ll be for all of you.” 

Ashtyn grins as she gets up. “Thank you so much, Louis. It’s an honor to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Louis looks down, embarrassed, “Thanks, Ashtyn.”

Ashtyn nods brightly, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, “Good luck, I’ll be rooting for you this week.” And then she’s gone, herding her camera crew away with her.

Louis rotates, a little lost. Her wetsuit is clinging to her skin uncomfortably now that the day is heating up. Since Surfer wanted to photograph her she invited them to her morning practice, and talked to Ashtyn right after. Louis doesn’t really know what to do with herself now. She managed to sneak out before Harry woke up, and she hasn’t heard from Niall or the other girls yet this morning. She should probably text them and meet up for lunch or something but she’s reluctant to go back to the hotel and Harry’s frustrating proximity. 

In the end her decision is made for her. Zayn comes wandering down the beach. She’s barefoot, in shredded jeans rolled up around her calves, and a black tank top. Louis calls out to her, and she pauses, squinting against the sun.

“Hey,” Louis says, a little breathlessly when she catches up to Zayn. 

Zayn blows smoke. It has a suspicious edge to it, definitely not cigarette smoke. 

Louis raises an eyebrow. “Want to share?”

Zayn smiles slowly and jerks her head. They walk a little ways in the direction she was walking before Louis joined her and sit down in the sand leaning their backs against a piece of bone white drift wood. 

Louis says, before Zayn can say anything about Harry, “How’s Liam?”

Zayn is unshakeable. Louis envies her ability to keep a blank expression as she gazes out over the expanse of the sea. “She’s good, as far as I know.”

“So are you two…” Louis waves her hand vaguely.

Zayn doesn’t respond. 

That seems fair enough to Louis, god knows she gets the not wanting to talk about that kind of thing right now, but she had thought Liam and Zayn had it pretty well sorted. She isn’t sure what else to say, so they sit in amicable silence for a while, passing the blunt back and forth.

At last Louis says, “How did you get this on the plane?”

“I got it here.”

“You work fast.”

“I have my ways.”

Louis nudges her in the ribs, “Come on, really?”

Zayn just smiles mysteriously.

Louis is pretty sure Zayn isn’t as cool as she pretends to be or seems to be, surely no one is, but she’s also less forthcoming than anyone Louis has ever tried to make friends with, so it’s hard to know for sure.

Finally, getting up her courage, she says, “What about Harry?”

“What do you mean?”

“Has she talked to you about anything lately?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I mean…”

“You mean has she talked to me about you.” 

It’s not a question. Louis answers it anyway. “Yeah, I guess.”

For a minute Louis thinks Zayn isn’t going to answer, but at last she says, “Don’t you think you should be talking to Harry about this?”

“I don’t know what to say to her.” Louis admits, messing with one of strings on her shorts. 

“How about, ‘I think I like you, Harry’?”

“What are we in primary school? And I don’t anyway, I don’t know. She’s just really pretty.”

“Okay, then, ‘I want to fuck you, Harry’.”

There’s a split second of silence, and then Louis starts to laugh, “I can’t say that to someone.”

“Well, you have to say something.”

“Oh, yeah? Has that worked well for you in the past?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what Niall does.”

“You know, you might be right.” Louis says. Niall does have a particular talent for effortlessly picking people up. “I’m not Niall, though. I can’t just do that.”

Zayn purses her lips. “No,” she says at last, “Neither can I.”

“Listen, don’t say anything to Harry, yeah?”

“It’s not my job to tell Harry how you feel.”

It feels like a chastisement, however mild Zayn’s tone is, but Louis accepts it. “Thanks,”

After about fifteen more minutes they get up and trail back to the hotel. Not much has been said, but Louis still feels like she’s taken an important step forward in getting along with Zayn. They find Niall texting in the lobby and she looks up at their red eyes and shifty grins and says, “Really? Without me?”

Zayn waves and starts upstairs, and Louis sits next to Niall, “So how was your night?”

Niall holds out her hand and examines her fingernails, “Pretty good,” she says, disgustingly smug, “How about your night?”

“You know it’s not like that.”

“Aha!” Niall points at Louis, “So you admit that it is like something.”

“Nope, it’s really not. I have to go change.” Louis stands before Niall can say anything else, “I’ll see you later.”

Niall shouts after her as she runs up the stairs, “Say hi to Harry for me!”

Louis flips her off.

She cracks the bedroom door open slowly, in case Harry is still sleeping, but the bed is empty, sheets rumpled and pushed to a pile in the middle. It’s so obvious that two people slept in this bed together, and Louis isn’t sure why this gives her such a pang. She lets the door slam shut behind her and leans against it with a sigh. 

“Louis, is that you?”

Louis stands up straight, heart leaping. “Harry?”

Harry pokes her head around the bathroom door. Her smile is enormous, all of her teeth showing, dimples like craters in her cheeks. “Hi, Lou!”

“Hi, yourself.”

“I was just showering, I was still all chloriney. “ Harry steps all the way into the bedroom. “Do you wanna get lunch or something?”

Louis feels faint. Harry has a skimpy towel wrapped around her, just barely covering her breasts where she’s holding up with one hand, and short enough that her thigh tattoo is showing. She looks bright eyed, flushed from her recent shower, rivulets of water sliding down her collarbones and the inside of her thighs. 

Louis has to swallow several times before she can answer, and even then her voice sounds off, “Yeah, lunch, food, excellent.”

Harry gives her an odd look, head tilted, before saying, “Let me just get dressed.”

Louis says frantically, “I’ll dress in the bathroom. No more nakedness, okay?”

When the bathroom door is shut safely between them Louis sits in the closed toilet lid and puts her head in her hands. It’s not much better in here, the air is all steamy and it smells like Harry’s shampoo. Louis dresses quickly to escape it, and then ends up lingering, afraid of what she’ll find if she opens the door. At last she does, and finds Harry innocently sitting on the bed scrolling through her phone. Louis crosses to the bedside table to pick up a pair of earrings.

Harry says idly, “That took you forever. Did you have to jill off?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like jacking off, but for girls.” Harry smiles with one half of her mouth.

Louis closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I think that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“I haven’t even gotten started,” Harry drops back against the bed and looks at the ceiling, “Were you beating around the bush? Parting the red sea?” she smirks, “Having a ménage a moi—mmf”

Louis has put her hand over Harry’s mouth, “Dear god stop,” she says. She's laughing, but the laughter fades. Harry is looking at her with wide eyes. It takes Louis a second to realize she has one of Harry’s wrists pinned to the bed, and the way she’s standing has her basically straddling one of Harry’s thighs. Her ribs feel like they’re tangling with Harry’s hipbone. They stay there, frozen. Louis wasn’t paying attention when she grabbed Harry, so she didn’t see Harry’s pupils blow, but her eyes are dark, nearly all black. Louis feels swallowed up. Her lips part on an airless inhale. Her thighs are shaking with how much she wants to grind down. 

She moves her hand away from Harry’s mouth carefully. She can see how hard Harry’s heart is beating in the flutter at the base of Harry’s neck, just over her collarbone. Louis wants to take it between her teeth, leave her marks all over Harry. _Mine_. “Oh,” she says.

Harry isn’t even blinking. Louis has no idea what expression is on her face. She drops Harry’s wrist and takes several steps back until she bumps into the other bed. She raises one hand to her face. Her cheeks feel flushed under her fingertips. “Shit,” she mumbles.

Harry sits up. “Lou?”

The room is airless. 

“Lou,” In a second Harry is standing next to Louis. When she reaches out Louis honestly considers scrambling backwards over the bed to get away. At least that way there would be something between them, maybe it would disrupt the hot thrum in Louis veins.

But she doesn’t. She lets Harry put her palm to Louis’ feverish cheek. _Please_ , Louis thinks of saying, _please fucking kiss me so I know I’m allowed to kiss you back_. 

Harry trails her fingers down Louis’ neck and then taps Louis collarbone twice, as if for good luck. She steps back. “So did we say something about lunch?” her tone is light. “I know I’m starving.”

Louis gapes, but apparently Harry is completely serious. Did she not feel what Louis did just now? Is she totally oblivious, or just incredibly uninterested? Louis can feel her eyebrows pressing together and she wipes her expression blank. “Yeah, okay.”

Harry picks her purse up off the floor and opens the bedroom door with a flourish. “After you,”

…

God hates Louis.

Louis isn’t a big fan of God right now either. 

Harry has led them to an intimate table for two right by the window. It couldn’t be more clear that these are meant to be romantic tables, for a couple to share a bottle of wine over dinner before going up to their massive white bed and fucking each other until they can’t walk. 

Harry shows no sign that she’s aware of this. She leaves Louis alone at the table, saying only, “I’ll grab us a couple menus,” and she’s been gone for at least ten minutes before Louis notices that she’s leaning against the bar talking to the barkeep. It’s a position that puts her at advantage, her legs endless, and her bum lovely and pert. Louis can just imagine how the elbows Harry is leaning on the bar push her breasts up into creamy curves.

She gets through five more minutes of this and then calls Niall. “I’m going to implode from sexual frustration.” She says, “Help me.”

“Harry’s not putting out, huh?”

“No. I mean yes but no.”

“So… she is or she isn’t?”

“I don’t think she likes me like that, and anyway it doesn’t matter because I don’t like her like that, and even if I did, which I don’t, I can’t like her because I can’t drag someone in to this stupid publicity thing.”

“So what you’re saying is she doesn’t like you, and you don’t like her.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Niiaalll,”

“Louis, I don’t know what to tell you. Did something happen?”

“Sort of.”

“What kind of thing sort of happened?”

“I—we— shit, nothing happened. Nothing ever happens.”

“Well, go jerk off or something.”

“Not you too.”

“What?”

“That’s what Harry said.”

“You told Harry you wanted to fuck her and she told you to jerk off? What an odd girl.”

“No,” Louis sighs and puts her forehead in her hands. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

“Okaaay.”

“She’s flirting with the barkeep.” Louis spares the bar a quick glance to ascertain that this is still the case. It is. Harry looks totally in her element.

“Aww.”

“It’s not cute! It’s disgusting. This is where we eat. There are children here, Niall, children exposed to Harry’s devious ways.”

“I was awwing at you. You’re jealous. You want Harry all to yourself, it’s adorable.”

Louis hangs up. 

And finally, at long last, Harry returns. “Hey, sorry it took me so long.”

Louis concentrates on arranging her napkin on her lap, “No problem, how’s your friend?”

“Huh? Who?” 

Louis points meaningfully.

Harry glances over her shoulder, “Oh. He’s fine.”

While they’re choosing what to order Louis’ phone buzzes. It’s a message from Richard. _You and Arthur are having cocktails at seven. Be on time. Try to look like you like him._

“Who says ‘cocktails’?” Louis says, staring down at the phone cradled in her palm.

“People who are talking about cocktails, usually, why?”

Louis looks toward the bar. The barkeep is polishing the counter with a towel and listening smilingly to an older women with vibrant red hair. Louis tucks her phone away. A vindictive part of her wants to tell Harry she has a date tonight, and act as if it’s real, but she doesn’t know that Harry would care, and in any case she doesn’t want to see Harry disappointed. Louis can’t stand to upset this delicate balance they have.

“It’s just so posh. Are you posh, Harry Styles? Do you often pop round to Buckingham Palace for cocktails with the queen before your tea?”

“Somehow I can’t really picture the queen knocking back cocktails of an afternoon.” Harry says. She’s smiling again, that beautiful smile that pulls up one side of her mouth more than the other and makes her eyes sparkle. She puts her elbows on the table. “Doesn’t she have more important things to do?”

“Who told you you couldn’t have a sex on the beach for lunch and go declare war right after? Whoever it was was clearly trying stunt your growth. Not that it worked, obviously.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“I want a cocktail. Do you think you can flirt some more free liquor out of the barman?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“Good girl.”

Harry turns pink and flustered at that, which is interesting. The barman doesn’t seem to mind that Harry knocks three chairs down on the way over to him, he’s as attentive as ever. All the same, Harry keeps looking over her shoulder at Louis, and Louis can’t help but feel like she’s won a victory. 

…

The feeling only lasts until she’s out of Harry’s sight. 

The two aren’t connected of course, it just happens that Harry and Louis end up spending the entire day together, only parting when Louis has to go meet Arthur for their first date. This empty feeling in the pit of her stomach is just dread at having to make nice with a fake boyfriend, it’s nothing to do with walking away from Harry. It doesn’t mean anything.

Arthur looks nice. Worse yet, he’s legitimately charming, and possibly likable. He greets Louis by kissing her on the cheek, and part of her has to fight not to rear back. It’s an unfortunate development. Louis would very much like to hate him in peace.

“You look great,” he says, pulling out a barstool for her to sit at, which strikes Louis as an interesting dichotomy between chivalrous and trashy.

Louis sits.

“What’ll you have?” Arthur says.

Thoughtlessly Louis says to the bartender, “Just get me the strongest thing you can think of.”

“How about a vodka martini, extra extra dry?”

“Extra extra extra dry. Skip the vermouth and the olive.”

“You just want a glass of vodka.”

“You know, that's not a bad idea”

Arthur orders a mojito and says, not looking at Louis, “Is this really so arduous to you?”

Instantly Louis smiles. For the room at large. Try to look like you like him. “Not at all, Arthur.” I feel like a lying dirty cowardly arsehole, but other than that it’s the easiest thing in the world. She doesn’t say that. No need to make this worse by alienating the one person who’s in the same position. 

When her martini comes she gulps it down in a few quick swallows. “Look,” she says, “Neither of us want to be here, right? So let’s at least have fun while we do it. Let’s get out of here.”

“Really?” Arthur laughs once, soundlessly, more air than anything else and says, “Is that a line?”

“Not a line. Well, yes, let’s get out of here is a line, but I didn’t mean it like that, swear to god.” Louis puts on hand over her heart for good measure. “I just think you seem nice enough, and as long as we’re in this shit show together we might as well enjoy it. And I’m dying to get out of this restaurant, I’ve been nowhere but this hotel since I got to Australia and I’m going mad.”

“Sure, alright. That sounds good.” 

So Arthur pays for their drinks, takes Louis' hand, and they get out of there.

They hit up a few bars in a kind of quickly sputtered out pub crawl, and then agree they want to go somewhere they can dance. Louis doesn’t realize how drunk she is until she trips over the doorway into the club and can’t right herself. Arthur catches her with an arm around her waist, and for a second everything feels so wrong, it should be Harry here with her, Harry catching her when she falls. But then Arthur laughs at her, and Louis laughs at herself, buoyed up by the sound, and remembers that this is just one night, it doesn’t matter, and she’s a free woman, she can do as she likes. It doesn't count.

Louis drags Arthur onto the dance floor. It’s a whirlwind of sounds and lights and more drinking. Louis doesn't know what half of the things she pours into her mouth are. They have to hold each other up. At some point Arthur’s thumb brushes harshly across Louis breast, catching on her nipple, and she looks up at him, jolted into a strange kind of clarity. He doesn't say anything. There's an odd look in his eyes. All she can think is how badly she wants to be kissed, and made to forget and Arthur, right here with her, is obviously willing. He’s reading her expression. His mouth jerks up in one corner.

Full of alcohol, under the colored lights anything seems possible. They find a dark corner, out of the way. Louis drags his face to hers. They stumble, Arthur gasps in Louis’ mouth when she presses him to the wall and she captures the sound with her lips. “Oh God, Louis,” he says.

She growls at him, “Don't talk,” 

It’s all of Louis frustration pouring out at once and crashing into him. They tangle together, their kisses grown messy, teeth clicking, breath coming in heaving pants. Arthur takes her by the waist, thumbs pressing into the bottom of her rib cage. Impatiently she nips at his bottom lip, and reaches down to pin his hands to the wall behind them. He moans, just a little broken sound, and Louis’ hips jerk. Her mind is a muddle that doesn’t know what it wants, but her body wants this and it wants more more more. Drunkenly, helplessly, she grinds her hips forward seeking friction, pressure, anything at all. And she feels him hard against her leg. It’s almost enough to stop her. Almost.

Louis puts her teeth against the side of Arthur’s throat. “Use your hand.”

He says breathlessly, “What?”

“Your hand.”

She comes like that, in the corner of a filthy night club, where everyone can see, one of Arthur’s hands trapped against the wall, the other down the front of Louis’ pants. She digs her fingernails into his shoulder as she comes, thighs shaking, the rough slide of his fingers against her too much and not enough, deliciously painful, agonizing in how illicit it feels. 

Arthur’s fingers slip across the bottom of her stomach as he redoes the button on her jeans one handed. “I’m guessing I shouldn’t get used to that.”

Louis steps back, letting go of his hand. Seemingly without thinking he rubs at his wrist. “No,” Louis says, blearily. She swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Who’s Harry?” he says as she starts to back away.

Louis stops. “What?”

“That’s what you said when you came.” Arthur manages to look completely nonchalant leaning against a wall where a thousand other people have probably had sloppy drunken sex before him, his hair all rumpled and his lips bitten red. For a minute Louis hates him.

“You’re takin’ the piss,” she says, even though he’s obviously not. She pats down her hair and heads back to the bar.

…

When Louis gets back to the hotel she so obviously shitfaced that the cabdriver goes so far as coming round the side of the car to help her get onto the sidewalk. Everything is wobbly and a blur of lights and the sidewalk unsteady beneath her feet.

She doesn’t remember walking up the stairs, but then she’s in front of the door to her room. She doesn’t remember opening the door, but then she’s standing in the doorway. “Louis?” Harry’s just a lump in the bed, “Hey,” she starts to sit up, “you okay?”

“I’m good, I’m great,” Louis says. The room tilts. Louis somehow gets into the room, even with the carpet sliding away, and just barely makes it to the toilet before she throws up. The dark red vomit diffusing in the water of the toilet bowl threatens to make her throw up again, and she dry heaves several times before she manages to grab the handle and flush it all away.

Louis sits there for a minute, forehead pressed to the cool porcelain, until Harry comes and puts her hands on Louis’ shoulders and helps her to her feet, and takes her out of her jeans and silky t-shirt, and leads her to bed, gripping her by the elbow every time the floor rises up and threatens to knock her in the face.

“You had a fun night, then?” Harry asks, perched on the side of the bed.

Louis doesn’t know why she says it. It’s like she’s in confessional and Harry is the only one who can save her. “I kissed him.”

There’s silence. Louis wonders if Harry has gone away. She grabs blindly at the air. “Harry?”

“I’m here.” She takes Louis searching hand, “Go to sleep, you can tell me about it in the morning.” And suddenly Louis hand is empty and the bed is shifting as Harry stands up and Louis has a rolling feeling in her stomach like she’s going to throw up again.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave,”

“I’m just going to the bathroom to wash up,”

“No, I mean don’t leave me,”

“I’ll be back.”

Louis let’s her walk away, because she doesn’t know how to better vocalize what she means. 

…

Louis wakes up in Harry’s arms for the second day in a row, but last time she woke up with just a pleasant drowsiness weighting down her limbs. Today she wakes up like a Mercedes hurtling into a tree at high speed. She feels crumpled and broken, her head is clanking like an engine in its death throes, and everything about her is displaying the evidence of too much too fast. 

She throws up again, and takes in her appearance in the bathroom mirror while she brushes her teeth. She still has last night’s makeup on. Her lipstick is faded from sleeping, but still noticeably smeared in one corner.

Louis closes her eyes. Arthur. Her underwear is still sticky. She wonders if Harry noticed last night when she undressed her. 

The worst part of it is she’s still fucking horny and she slept all night almost naked, oblivious to the yards of her hot skin that were directly touching Harry’s. Thinking about that isn’t helping Louis’ concentration any so she takes a quick shower, blows her hair dry and pulls it up into a ponytail. She has nothing but a small towel to cover her, but there’s nothing much she can do about that right now, so she opens the door into the bedroom. 

Harry is getting dressed, she glances up as Louis walks past. “Hey, Lou, you good?”

Louis pushes away a niggling sense of guilt. “Yeah, I’m good.” 

Harry nods, keeping her eyes on the shirt she’s turning right side out, “Big night last night?”

“I guess. Hey, when I got back in, did I say anything to you, um, at all?” 

Harry’s got the shirt sorted and is suddenly immensely interested in her sock drawer. She paws through it with scrunched forehead concentration as she says, “No, nothing much.”

“Really?”

“Nope.”

Louis gets dressed without really noticing what she’s putting on. “Okay.”

Harry finally decides what she’s going to wear. It’s a romper, or rather, it’s something smaller than a romper, trying to pass itself off as a romper.

“Do you think that’s fully grown yet?” Louis asks, “Is it really right to take it away from its mother?”

Harry does a little spin. “Don’t you like it?”

The shorts are barely short enough to cover Harry’s bum, and the whisper thin straps look seconds away from failing. The neckline in the front plunges so low Louis can see a hint of Harry’s butterfly tattoo. It’s silk or chiffon, or some other clinging material, and it’s very obvious Harry isn’t wearing a bra. A pair of shoulder baring ruffle sleeves manage to just save it from total indecency. 

“Are you sure that’s meant to be worn in public?”

Harry shakes out her hair, “Well, I did buy it in the lingerie section… I’m joking, Louis, stop looking like that.”

“You’re way too aware of how fit you are.”

Harry shrugs, “I’ve seen myself in mirrors.”

Louis crushes her nails into her palm and has to look away.

Louis has to practice this morning, the event starts tomorrow, so she relinquishes Harry to Liam and Zayn, and her and Niall head down to the beach. 

“You didn’t come back to the room again last night. You making a killing of all the single men in Australia?”

There’s a definite skip in Niall’s step. “Only two single men.”

“You slut, Horan.” 

Niall fist bumps her. “What about you then?”

Louis can’t keep the smile from melting off her face, although she gives it a valiant effort.

Niall brings them screeching to a halt, her hand on Louis’ upper arm. “Louis? What happened? Did Harry say no?”

"What?”

"I was so sure she was into you. I'm sorry."

"No, Niall, it's nothing to do with Harry. It's kind of a long story."

Niall might act like girl with out a care in the world, but just now she's looks deeply sad. “Well let’s have it, then.”

They start walking again as Louis tells it. She finishes as they’re putting on their wetsuits in the changing room by the beach. Niall stares at her. “A fake relationship? Why didn’t you say? That’s absolute shit, Lou.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“So you fucked him?”

“Technically he fucked me…”

“Wow. What about Harry?”

“I don’t know.” Louis pushes open the door and the step together onto the sand, side by side, holding their boards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels like it took forever to write, but it was only two of days, wow. I have a terrible writing hangover so it'll be at least a few days 'till the the next one, probably more. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!


	11. Chapter 11

For the first day of the event window the call is off. Liam explains to Harry and Zayn, “That means the conditions aren’t good and the event won’t go ahead. If the call is on then the event does happen, and if the call is standby then they make another call later in the day to say whether it’s on or off.”

Zayn looks supremely uninterested, but she usually looks like that.

Harry leans over Louis shoulder to ask her a follow up question, and her hair brushes Louis shoulder. It’s like Louis forgets everything she ever knew about surfing. She stutters until Liam steps in and answers it for her.

For three days the surfers all wait with bated breath and the call is off, over and over.

Louis feels stagnant, caged in by expectations. Whatever she might tell the other girls a reckless sort of melancholy is creeping over her. She’s good at smiling and laughing, and flippant remarks, but that doesn’t mean they’re always real. 

Her picture is all over the news, hand in hand with Arthur, both of them shiny eyed and opulent, obviously drunk. The pair of them look like poster children for the rich degenerate youth. Richard calls her to yell about damage control. “I’d almost rather admit you’re gay.” He says, “Try to be more thoughtful next time you go out with him.”

Almost rather she admit she’s gay. But being a drunken rabble rousing piece of shit is better than loving girls. At least people can understand that, at least it’s been done before, there’s so much precedent for her to be the girl everyone wants her to be because this is what celebrities do, they have problems with drinking and drugs, and hardly anyone bothers to think about why. 

This is why. This lie is why. This pressure to be something glittering and impossible.

Also it turns out Arthur is some sort of society playboy. Richard failed to mention this, and her and Arthur didn’t exactly do the Getting To Know You sing-along when they went out, so Louis finds out like this, by reading scathing gossip pages. 

“You’re joking,” Liam says, “The Window family? Never heard of them, but that’s a clunker of a last name for a bunch of rich swells.”

“It’s through his mum’s side that he’s connected to high society, apparently.” Zayn says. They’ve become a right little research team, not that it takes much digging. Louis Tomlinson and Arthur Window have dragged each other spectacularly into the spotlight.

Louis says, “Does this mean I’m part of the in crowd? Do you think he’ll introduce me to the queen?”

“I doubt he knows the queen.” Harry says, rolling her eyes in derisive amusement. “But if he does will you take me along? I want to ask her a couple questions about war and sex on the beach.”

Zayn rolls her eyes as Harry and Louis exchange secret smiles.

Because one good thing has come of this.

A few days ago Louis walked in on Harry scrolling through a webpage thick with advertisements and side-columns and pictures of Louis and Arthur. She’d jumped, and made a motion like she wanted to close her laptop and hide the evidence but knew it was too late.

Louis came over to stand next to her and look down at the computer. How the fucking paps managed to get this many pictures of her and Arthur when they’ve only gone out once is a mystery. Louis’ pretty sure some of the pictures were photo shopped. “He actually looks kind of nice holding my hand. Isn’t it disgusting?”

Harry looked up, startled, “Don’t you like him?

Louis didn’t even think, before she told Harry. “It’s fake, Haz. It’s for publicity. My manager doesn’t want it getting out that I’m gay.”

Harry looked down again, it was hard to divine what she was thinking. At last she said, “I’m so sorry, that’s really shitty.” But she was smiling a hundred watt smile, and Louis felt so dazzled by it she was able to swipe the whole situation away with one hand.

“It’ll all be over soon.”

Harry’s smile grew, and Louis blinked away sunspots. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Louis is photographed going into the hotel on Sunday, but it’s an isolated incident, just a couple of cameramen and she’s too distracted to really give it any thought. 

Louis and Harry still haven’t talked. Or, well, they’ve talked. They dedicated an entire two hours to which film Keira Knightly looks best in. Harry argues in favor of Pride and Prejudice, Louis is rooting for Pirates of the Carribean. “The first one, when she’s dressed up like a pirate and she looks all rumpled and devil may care. That part where she’s tied to the mast is really good too.” (Harry’s eyelids flutter a little at that) They also have a long argument about fruit. Harry has an obscene way of eating bananas that would probably give Louis a stroke if she had a dick. As it is she has to watch every straight male for a mile radius do a double take every time they walk past Harry and her sinful mouth. Harry only seems to take encouragement from Louis’ growing glower. 

They haven’t talked about how it’s now routine to sleep curled around each other in one bed, whether or not they’re alone in the room. They haven’t talked about how they know both of them is attracted to women. They haven’t talked about awkward heated moments when one of them catches the other staring, or their fingers brush in the morning when Harry brings Louis her cup of tea. 

Louis has developed a knack for maximizing the amount of time they can touch while passing a tea cup between them.

Niall thinks it’s hilarious. “Louis Tomlinson, ladies and gentlemen, genuinely enjoys surrendering herself to twenty foot waves in an ocean full of sharks and killer whales and fish with teeth bigger than their face, but is afraid to tell a friend she thinks she’s hot.”

Liam is distracted by her own problems; Zayn is shrouding herself in mystery once more, and has retreated from Liam at high speed. She’s been sleeping in the other bed in Harry and Louis’ room a lot of the time, actually, since Niall seems to have hit a personal best for continuous one night stands.

“Surfing fans are thirsty,” she tells the girls on Sunday night, gathered in the hot tub, cocktails in hand. “I tell them I surf and they’re practically begging to get down on their knees for me.”

Harry looks at her wide eyed, “And you really, like that? I mean, no judgment from me, I’m completely in support of women taking what they want, but don’t you ever get tired of it being all sexual? Don’t you ever want more?”

Niall shrugs, “Sure,” she agrees, sunshiny as always, “I want to have a committed relationship once I meet someone right for me but I don’t see any reason to live like a monk until then.”

On Monday, finally, the call is on.

It’s Round 1. Louis is surfing in the sixth heat, which should give her some time to relax but she can’t concentrate all morning. She needs to be in the thick of things. She tells the other girls they don’t have to come, but they band together as one and follow her as she drags her board, and her bag with her jersey and her gear down to the beach to watch the first heat. Other women in the competition, many of whom she’s surfed with before, raise their hands to greet her. One of them shouts, “Tommo, I heard you were kicking again. Good on ya! Grab a coldie with us later?”

Louis waves her off with an agreeable, “Thanks, Nik,”

There’s a tiny mob of fans, who crowd around Louis wanting autographs and pictures. One of them asks Louis to sign her boobs. Louis laughs as she does it, “I feel like a rock star. Hey,” she pokes Harry’s arm, “Will you call me Mick Jagger?”

Harry watches the girl walk away, and says only, “No,”

“Please? I’ll call you Keith Richards. We can have really good hate sex and tell the media we don’t get on.”

Harry’s looks startled. After a moment she says slowly, even slower than usual, “Was that flirting, Louis Tomlinson?”

“Um..?”

“I thought I’d never see the day.”

For some reason Louis feels defensive, like she’s been caught in a lie. “I’ve flirted with you.”

“You’re always winding me up, that’s not the same as flirting.”

Louis meets Harry’s gaze. “Maybe not for some people.”

Louis has to look away then because Harry looks so unabashedly thrilled.

Harry holds Louis’ hand all the way down the beach. There’s a peculiar air of possessiveness to it that Louis finds she doesn’t mind at all. Louis almost forgets how nervous she is until they find a place to sit and aren’t moving anymore. Harry squeezes her hand, and Liam puts an arm around her shoulders but Louis’ lungs still feel like they’re being crushed.

She almost freezes up before her heat, that old icy terror taking over. 

She still places well enough to go to Round 2.

Harry hugs her tightly even though she’s soaking wet. “I’m so—” she starts to say, but she doesn’t finish. 

Louis, nothing but adrenaline in her veins, and the crash of waves in her ears, reaches up, curves her hand around the back of Harry’s neck, stands on her toes, and kisses her. Her lips are velvet, her mouth wet. 

Louis steps back immediately, heartbeat frantic, deliberately casual expression, clapping Harry on the back, hoping she can pass it off as nothing more than part of a celebratory embrace.

Harry has a terrible poker face, but luckily no one is paying attention to her. At least probably not, Louis can’t look away from her flushed cheeks and dimples to find out.

…

After the initial spate of bad days everything suddenly comes together. The call is on every day. The judges are delighted by Louis. She ends up hyperventilating before one hundred percent more of her events than she used to, but she still manages to stay in the running until the quarter finals when she and Tyler Wright have the first heat, and Louis is judged second.

All in all Louis is pretty happy with her results, and she says so to the reporters who surround her after the judging is done. “Tyler is a great surfer, and she surfed better than me today, it’s completely fair. Besides, this means I don’t have to worry about this round of finals and semi-finals, and I can do anything I want until we go to Victoria for Bells Beach. I didn’t expect to be perfect again right away but it would be a mistake to count me out. I plan to make it to the end, quote me on that. I don’t like losing.” 

The reporters congratulate her on her successful comeback, Tyler Wright shakes her hand, and Niall screams like a banshee, before bear hugging her and announcing they’re all going out that night to celebrate. 

Harry just brushes the back of their hands together. 

It’s been a week now and they still haven’t mentioned the kiss.

…

“Laird Hamilton,” Louis insists.

“No way. Jeff Clark. He basically discovered Mavericks. He was a pioneer.” Niall’s eyes are bright and animated over the rim of her pint.

“So was Laird. Tow- in surfing wouldn’t even exist without him.”

“Laird had some things going for him. He was prettier, and he had that great GQ modeling gig. But Jeff Clark was out on the front lines. He was in the goddamn trenches.”

“Greg Noll said he could never do the things Laird Hamilton did. He said Laird Hamilton was the best big wave rider in the world. And I know both of us have seen the videos of him surfing Teahupo’o. The fucking Millenium wave? You think that wasn’t the front lines? I had that Surfer magazine cover on my wall for years. God I’ve had a crush on Laird Hamilton for my whole life and I’m a lesbian.”

Niall shakes her head and holds her hands up in surrender. “Okay, you’re right. Laird is amazing. I’m just saying, so was Jeff Clark.”

Harry looks bored. She’s been watching Louis for several minutes with unfocused eyes. Now she swirls around the ice in the empty glass and stands up. “I’m getting a refill. Anyone want anything?”

Louis doesn’t watch Harry walk to the bar. She doesn’t watch Harry lean into the bar and the way it stretches out her long calf muscles. She doesn’t watch the strands of hair that catch in the strap of Harry’s tank top when she moves her head. She doesn’t watch the two inches of soft skin visible between Harry’s shirt and her shorts, and she doesn’t watch the flicker of emotion, so quickly swept away, that crosses Harry’s face when she turns around with her drink and catches Louis’ gaze.

If Liam and Zayn are having an on night, Louis and Harry are having an off night. Not that there is a “Louis and Harry” not that they’re a capital T-Thing with all the rights held therein to tout themselves with an ampersand tying their names together inextricably. Not that Louis is anything to Harry at all. Not that Harry is anything to Louis.

Arthur has texted her three times that night. 

“Hey how are u?”

“Can we meet and talk?”

“Call me when you have a free moment.”

Louis swipes them all away after just a glance. She can deal with the spoiled soc later.

What she can’t do is stop measuring the gap between her and Harry, and the way it keeps growing, the way the electric crackle between them is sparking out like an empty lighter.

Harry sits back down on the other side of the table. Niall and Liam and Zayn are an effective barrier between Harry and Louis but even if they aren’t touching Louis can still see the glittering green of Harry’s eyes. Harry’s stoic silence is less of a barrier and more of a wall, dripping with vines, begging to be climbed, too high to scale. 

Louis, disarmed, unarmed, has no choice but to sit on the other side of the table and let Niall distract her. 

…

Harry goes home with short girl with messy hair and a sleeveless nirvana t-shirt. 

Louis goes back to the hotel alone. The room is unnervingly silent without the sound of anyone else breathing. The bed is cold, and huge in the absence of Harry’s limbs colliding with Louis.

When she falls asleep her dreams are full of emerald eyes and dark brown curls and perfect, pink cupid’s bow lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when I said the next chapter wouldn't be out for a couple of days, probably? and here we are, like two weeks later... anyway. Next chapter will take less than two weeks to post, maybe, no promises. Also it will be longer, hopefully, and definitely more exiting ;)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!
> 
> Oh, and, the song for this chapter is Spaces, by One Direction :)


	12. Chapter 12

“She’ll never speak to me again,” Louis pokes her fork despondently into a sausage, “I’ve ruined everything.”

“I don’t think you have,” Zayn says.

“I have.” Louis doesn’t eat the sausage, she tugs her fork out and stabs it again, getting a vicious pleasure from the clang of fork against plate. “She went home with some other girl last night, did you see?”

“Yeah, and you let Arthur finger bang you against a wall.”

“Fuck,” Louis’ head jerks up, “do you think she’s trying to get back at me for that?”

“Honestly, mate, I don’t think Harry has a vengeful bone in her body,” Liam says, “But she hasn’t said anything to me about you, so I really don’t know what she’s thinking. She came back to our room anyway,” she adds, all casual, reaching across Zayn to steal her glass of water. 

“What? Liam, stop hydrating, what did she do? What did she say?”

“Yeah, it was only a little bit after we got back,” Liam glances at Zayn, and continues when she nods, “She said something, um, about she couldn’t go back to your room and asked to crash in our bed.”

“What about the other girl?”

Liam shrugs, “I don’t think she went home with her at all. Maybe she was just trying to make you jealous. She even looked like you, Louis. I don’t think Harry was that interested in her, she just doesn’t know what to do with all the excess of feelings she has for you because you’re not available. ” 

“Not available? I was right there, all night.”

“Louis, you can’t expect her to read your mind.” Zayn says.

Louis glares at Zayn and Liam across the table. They’re stupidly adorable this morning, existing in tandem with the kind of casual intimacy that makes bystanders feel intrusive just for looking. Louis doesn’t know why she agreed to go to breakfast with them at all. She scrapes some money out of her purse and throws it on the table before standing up and shoving in her chair. “I have to go.” She says.

Liam and Zayn might not be all lucky, all happy, all sorted, but at least they’ve gotten to experience this; holding each other in public and kissing at night.

Louis’ dramatic storming out is ruined when one of the waitresses runs after her and asks for a picture and Louis has to wipe away her scowl so she can take a nice photograph. “I’m really proud of you.” The waitress says.

Louis gives her a hug, because she looks on the verge of tears. “Thank you,” she says, “can I, uh, get you anything? A tissue? Or like…”

“No,” she gnaws on her lower lip and stares, forehead wrinkled, out the front window. “I just wanted to say, we’ll all still support you, no matter what. Most of us. No matter what.”

Louis takes a step back. “Thanks. Thank you?”

The girl nods and runs back to the counter. She’s wearing a striped rainbow bracelet.

At the door Louis takes a deep steadying breath and Googles herself. And there it is, the top news story is headed by a picture of her and Harry behind the hotel, sitting together at the side of the pool. Harry in her god-awful white crochet bikini that makes Louis want to do unspeakable things, and Louis, in a dark blue one piece she usually uses for surfing.

Louis tries very hard to look at it objectively, two random girls, what does this picture say about them? Louis is laughing; she looks genuinely happy—eyes crinkled and teeth hitting her bottom lip—in a way she doesn’t look in many photographs anymore. She has one hand lightly under Harry’s elbow, and her whole body curved toward Harry, the way a flower turns to the sun. Harry looks smirky and self-satisfied, and terribly fond, her eyes lingering on Louis like she’s drinking in the sight of her happy--happy because of Harry.

Louis remembers what she was thinking just a few minutes ago about Zayn and Liam, how easily they fit around one another, how private the messages that pass in a moment of eye contact, a brief touch of fingers to arm. That’s how it feels looking at this picture of her and Harry. This moment should not be immortalized for the masses to look at with their scandal-hungry eyes, for the media to pounce on with their slavering mouths, dripping derivative gossip.

Louis opens the door. If she were someone else, looking at that picture, she might think she and Harry were dating too.

Once Louis is on the street she doesn’t know what to do. Finally she leans against a street light, pulls out her phone, and dials a number she swore she’d never dial.

“Arthur? Will you pick me up?”

He’s there within ten minutes. He pulls up in a sleek silver Porsche and when Louis climbs in she says, “You’re joking.”

“It’s my parent’s money.” He shrugs. 

The engine revs with a rabid growl and Louis can’t help but smile at the wildness of the sound. “It’s still disgusting.” She tells him. 

“Would you respect me more if I drove a Honda that threatened to drop parts all over the road every time I took a turn?”

Louis stays silent.

“I thought so,” he says, full of the surety of the pampered.

“It doesn’t matter, because you wouldn’t.” Louis says, ready for an argument, “I mean, if you were the sort of person who drove a falling apart Honda, you wouldn’t be you, so maybe I would respect you then.”

Arthur is unruffled by insults. “So what brought this on? I wasn’t really sure I’d hear from you outside of manager sanctioned events, at this point.”

“I don’t know,” Louis says, rolling down the automatic window and then rolling it back up, hands twitchy with the need to do something. “Everyone’s busy this morning and I figured, why not?”

“Everyone’s busy? Everyone in the world?”

“All the people I’d actually like to spend time with,” Louis clarifies.

“Ouch,” he says, “Careful, or I’ll start to think you don’t like me.”

“I don’t like you.” Louis says. “Haven’t we gone over this?”

Arthur has nothing to say to that, “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care,” Louis says, “Anywhere but here.”

…

“Her name is Anna.” Arthur runs his tongue round the base of his ice cream cone to catch the drips, “She’s an underwear model in America.”

“Seriously?” Louis has only sort of been listening as Arthur talks. The taste of chocolate ice cream on her tongue is making the sound of an antique gold umbrella being opened echo through the intervening weeks. She makes an effort to tune back in. “You scored an underwear model?”

Arthur laughs, “Yeah, well, it’s not all as sweet as. My parents think it’s bad for the family’s image or some shite so,” he waves a hand in a vague motion indicating the two of them. “Enter respectable athlete Louis Tomlinson.”

“Richard told me it was because you were trying to gain credibility as a surfer.” Perversely the sugar hitting her bloodstream has calmed Louis’ frenetic pace, and she quietly watches Arthur as he gathers his words.

“It was partly that. It just seemed convenient all round, sweep away scandalous rumors and at the same time connect me to a more prestigious career than getting drunk and high and spending my parent’s money. To be honest I don’t think competitive surfing will ever be my scene, whether I fake date one famous surfer or twenty. It all backfired anyway, your respectability I mean. My parents aren’t thrilled with the fallout. No offense, of course.”

Louis makes a loud scoffing noise. You get what you pay for when you ask your son to fake date a girl you know nothing about. “None taken. I don’t want to be saddled with you anymore than you do with me. And Richard gave me a talking to like you wouldn’t believe. As if it’s my duty to lie so the public can comfortably love me, secure in the knowledge that I’m a goody two shoes heterosexual just like they want their daughters to grow up to be? Bullshit.”

“So why don’t you tell the truth?”

Louis looks Arthur in the eyes. “Why don’t you? People would get over a playboy dating an underwear model in ten seconds flat. Been there, done that.”

“Point taken.” He looks down and swallows. “It’s just, I don’t want to make her famous like this. They’ll say she’s a whore and a gold digger and that I’m only with her for her looks. It’s not fair to her. I want to do it right.”

“And this is right? Fingering me in a club while you’re falling down drunk?”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “What about you? Who do you have to hide?” The unspoken message; _Is what you’re doing better?_

Louis is quiet for too long before she says, “I don’t have anyone to hide.”

“I thought there was a girl. A particular girl.”

“No. Well,” Louis clears her throat a couple times, “there’s Harry, but…”

“Ah, the infamous Harry.” He smirks.

Unwillingly Louis blushes, remembering the last time she said Harry’s name to him. She wants to slap him. “That night was a mistake.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Tell me about Harry. Why isn’t she your particular girl?”

“She just isn’t, okay?”

“Remind me which one is Harry? Oh, wait, the one with long brown hair, right? Sort of curly? Yeah. You look like a couple.” Arthur looks musingly into the distance, “You lean into each other like you always know where the other one is.” He puts his hands up in front of him, palms almost touching. “Like you can sense each other’s motion in the air separating you, like you always wish that air would disappear.”

Louis takes this in for a moment. “You’re a sentimental sod, you know that?” she says at last, thinking of the way she can sometimes feel the heat coming off Harry’s skin if they’re sitting close enough, and how Harry once said, holding Louis’ hand, her voice in awe, _“I can feel your heartbeat from here.”_

Arthur smiles complacently at her. “That doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

Just then Louis’ phone lights up with a text. Harry. _Where are you?_

Typing so fast her letters get muddled up Louis responds, _Wehre are yiu?_

 _Our room. Want to come up?_

And then, a second later, another message, _Xx._

Louis, her eyes on those two little kisses, so small, such a stupid thing to hang hope on, says, “Can you take me back to the hotel?” Her voice all practiced boredom, “Duty calls.”

“Booty calls, more like,” Arthur says under his breath, and he crunches down the last of his cone, licks an errant drip of ice cream off his fingers, and digs his car keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go.”

“Do you love her?” Louis asks, once they’re back in the car.

Arthur’s mouth curves up a little in one corner, that smile of secret lovers, terrified and still unable to believe how lucky they are. “I don’t know how to tell if I love someone, but I don’t know what else this feeling could be.” He puts the car into gear. “Buckle your seat belt, okay? Last thing I need is to be in the news for killing Louis Tomlinson in a car crash. My parents would cut off my allowance.”

“It would put the underwear model thing in perspective though, I bet.” Louis says offhandedly, and she doesn’t listen to his response because all she can think is _Harry Harry Harry_ to the rhythm of the blood pounding in her veins.

_Want to come up?_

_Xx._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading


	13. Chapter 13

“Harry?” The room looks empty at first glance, smooth and pale and untouched.

“Lou?” Harry’s voice is coming from the balcony.

Louis goes towards it like it’s a homing beacon.

Harry is sprawled across one of the chairs, still in the clothes she wore last night, but she’s wiped her face clean of makeup. 

She has a determined look on her face. Louis can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad sign.

Louis goes to the balcony rail and looks out. The air feels thick and strange around them. Arthur was right. Louis is aware of Harry sitting behind her, with the scorching clarity of turning her back on a tiger coiled to spring, something with infinite power for beauty and for harm.

“I’m sorry,” is how Harry starts.

Half turning to Harry, Louis says, “What for?”

“For last night.”

“Oh.” Louis keeps her expression blank with the ease of long practice. “It’s not really, uh, my business.”

“You don’t care?”

Louis shrugs, picking at a patch of rust on the balcony rail. “No. It’s fine. You should have fun.”

“You don’t care that she fucked me?” 

“No. Why should I?”

Harry, for some unfathomable reason, is angry. “She was good.” Harry says, frowning at Louis, “I let her ride my face.”

Louis swallows hard. “Um. Good for you, mate.”

“We did it in the bathroom.” Harry continues. Her voice is even but she’s holding so tightly to the arm of her chair that her knuckles have gone white. “Her sitting on the edge of the sink, me on my knees in front of her, just… taking it… Her hands knotted in my hair. Getting my face… all wet. She was loud too. People kept knocking on the door of the loo and it was obvious they could hear her. Everyone knew we were fucking in there.”

Louis stares at her feet, afraid if she looks up Harry will see the naked hunger in her eyes. She wants Harry’s lips against her own, whispering into her mouth so that rough voice will scrape her throat raw like cigarette smoke.

Harry clears her throat loudly. “I didn’t let her take me home, though.”

“No?” Louis says, all at once fed up with this game. “You should have, it sounds like. If you were having such a good time. Why not? If the two of you were such a good match.”

Harry gets to her feet. Out of habit Louis steps toward her, ready to catch her if she stumbles. Harry stays steady and both of them pretend Louis didn’t move. “Maybe next time I will.” Harry says. There’s a challenge there. When Louis doesn’t say anything, Harry turns to go.

Louis watches her walk away—she always seems to be watching Harry walk away—and calls, “Have you seen the news?”

“What news?”

“Google me.” Louis says, and then she pushes past Harry and lets her watch Louis walk away for once.

Stupid, Louis realizes once she’s heading downstairs, probably stupid. There’s no saying what Harry will find in the simian-penned depths of the internet.

…

Harry tracks her down on the beach later that day, and waits on the sand for Louis to come to her. Louis walks up the beach, holding her surfboard under one arm, and wringing water out of her hair with the other.

Harry looks uncharacteristically shy. “Hey,”

“Hi.”

“How’s the ocean?” Harry asks, like she’s enquiring as to the health of a mutual friend.

Louis looks over her shoulder. It was cathartic, the rush, the cool sea spray. “Good,” she says at last, even though it’s an enormous simplification of how breathless and washed clean she feels. 

Harry nods, biting her lip. “I just wanted to say, I think it’s great. You and Arthur. You should do whatever you think is right.”

Louis shakes her head. “What?”

“I Googled you, like you said. And, um,” Harry picks at a tiny bump of skin on her arm, “I’m… it’s fine. I get it. You need to do what you need to do.”

“I need to—what? Harry, what?”

“You and Arthur should keep… or, or not. Whatever feels right. And, uh, I’m not ready for a relationship anyway, you know?”

This is not what Louis planned. For a second she feels a brief spurt of irrational anger. She can picture herself in a four color comic, sand yellow, ocean cyan, and a thought bubble over her head filled with punctuation mark-censored expletives. “Oh,” she says, her skin going cold under the burning Australian sun. “Yeah, neither am I.”

Harry’s expression isn’t happy. “So what’s happening, Louis? What are we doing?”

Louis is a haunted house. There’s nothing left inside her to ruin. “What do you mean?”

She has the sense Harry is gathering herself, coiling her muscles in preparation to leap, and then something in her eyes slams shut and she looks away over the ocean. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Louis has nothing to say to bring Harry back to the edge. This dance is exhausting, but Louis is trapped, the Sisyphus of imagining a kiss and never seeing it through. She reaches out and touches the back of Harry’s hand, because she can’t do more, and when Harry moves her hand away Louis says nothing.

Seven beats of silence. Louis taps it out on her leg. Harry nods. She smiles. Her smile is little, turned down at the corners, no dimples. “Okay.”

“Let’s get lunch,” she says. A test, Harry doesn’t want her like that, but please, please, she still wants her like this? 

Harry, to Louis’ relief, nods her head, smile stretching, reaching toward something real. “Yeah, I’m starving.”

…

The next morning Louis wakes up late. The arm that’s under Harry’s head has fallen asleep and her other arm is curled over Harry’s waist. Harry comes awake the way she always does, slowly, with a squeaky little yawn, and then twisting around in Louis arms so they’re facing each other. “Hey,” she rasps, eyelids drooping.

She could get used to this, Louis thinks. Just this, simple and real. She doesn’t need anything more. She just needs Harry, with the dangerous burning ache of an addiction.

Harry slots her leg between Louis’ “Let’s do something today.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Harry says, her mouth a carefree tilt, “Like anything. Let’s just go somewhere. Us. Together.”

Louis can’t help the nervous, joyous, fluttering feeling in her body. “Okay.”

“We can’t go to Sea World,” Harry says, “Because they mistreat the animals.”

It shouldn’t be endearing, basic compassion, but of course it is, as everything about Harry is. “I wouldn’t even suggest it.”

They don’t come up with an airtight plan but it doesn’t matter. Liam knocks on the door while they’re getting dressed and announces she’s planned a surprise. “You’ll love it,” she tells Louis, “I promise. Last day in Queensland, I'm not letting you cloister yourself.”

Harry touches Louis’ shoulder as they leave the room with Liam, “Another time,” she promises, “just us.” Louis is too busy glaring at Liam’s back to reply.

Niall is clearly in on the so-called surprise, she greets Harry and Louis with an even more glittery than usual grin as they climb into the taxi. It’s hard to tell if Zayn knows, and equally hard to tell if she cares. She obligingly moves over to give Harry and Louis room to sit next to her in the back, gently touches Louis’ knee, and then puts the side of her head against the window and closes her eyes. She’s not sitting next to Zayn, Louis notices.

Harry is looking between Zayn and Liam too. With a tiny sigh she slides her hand into Louis’ and says softly, “What do you think is happening with them?”

“You know Zayn better than I do,” Louis dismisses, “And Liam, she won’t push anyone for something they’re not ready to give. She’s probably just waiting for Zayn to come to her with her whole self.”

Harry gives Louis a funny, scrutinizing look. The taxi trundles out of the hotel parking lot and she says, “Maybe Zayn just wants things she can’t have. She’s trying to come to terms with the fact that Liam doesn’t want the same things she wants, and it’s extra confusing because sometimes it seems like Liam does want those things, she’s just scared. Scared of the shit the world will give her for being gay.” 

Louis opens her mouth— _scared?_ —she’s thinking, _fuck that_ , but Niall leans round her seat to look back at the three of them and says, “I have a bottle of Scotch in my purse.” When Niall turns back to face the front, listening to something Liam is whispering in her ear, Harry says, “And when she’s drunk and out of control she can admit it, just barely, what she wants, but in the morning she’s back to pretending she isn’t _made_ of wanting.”

“Maybe,” says Louis quickly, “Maybe if Zayn would just say what she wants—”

“Maybe both of them are to blame,” Harry breaks in, but her expression, and her eyes, burning into Louis’, don’t match her diplomatic tone. “Too little communication means they have to interpret everything the other person does or says, and it’s easy to interpret it wrong. At least they’ve talked, I think.”

Louis can’t hold Harry’s gaze. “Liam’s not scared.” she says, not thinking as she speaks, “If Zayn is so charming to everyone she meets how can Liam assume she’s not the same as the rest?”

Harry’s hand twitches against Louis’ palm. “Of course she’s not the same as everyone else. Can’t you see how she looks at her?”

They both startle when the car door slides open and Niall says in a bouncy voice, “We’re here.”

When Harry climbs out Zayn mutters to Louis, “That was good but next time use your own names, please, for god’s sake. None of this, ‘I’m asking for a friend’ crap.”

Louis mumbles, “People in glass houses or whatever… Besides, we already fucking talked.” 

The parking lot they’ve pulled into is crowded, leading up to a smattering of small buildings, behind which the sun glints off the ocean. Louis jumps down from the car, flip flops smacking the pavement.

Meanwhile Harry is saying to Niall, “How come I wasn’t in on it?”

Niall says, “You would’ve told Lou. Like you could ever say no to her.”

To Louis relief Harry smirks when Louis looks over at them. They’re good then, Louis thinks, and they fall in next to each other naturally when Liam leads the group across the tarmac through a gap between two of the buildings.

They come out onto a long wooden pier crowded with the skeletal shapes of boat hulls, leaning against each other and holding each other up. A chaotic sprawl like a scattering of toys left behind by a giant. The whole place smells of cigarettes and gasoline, and under that the salt of the sea. Louis looks up to Harry, “Really, a boat ride?”

Harry’s eyes are sparkling. “Not just any boat ride.” 

“Is that your idea of a sexual innuendo, because it was terrible, Haz.”

“If you’d stop staring at your girl for one goddamn second,” Niall leans in between them and grabs Louis shoulders to turn her to face a low, worn wooden sign along the railing of the peir.

BOAT TOURS, the sign reads, GREAT BARRIER REEF.

“Huh,” Louis says.

“Better than Sea World, don’t you think?” Harry doesn’t quite look at her, and Louis has the feeling both of them have the same picture in their heads at that moment; lying tangled in their shared bed that morning, stars in their eyes and pointless hope in their hearts. 

Louis nods, trying to muster excitement for this shared outing with her favorite people. “Yeah, much better.”

They stroll out along the pier, arms around each other’s waist, Harry’s long fingers pressed into Louis hipbone. Louis feels like she’s back in that four color comic, the perfectly round sun painting triangular stripes of white across the ocean. Harry’s character would be statuesque and curvy, her hair in victory rolls, her lips lush and red, Louis, beside her, small with mousy hair. Clark Kent before he takes off his glasses.

“If I was a superhero, what would my name be?” Louis asks.

Harry squints in the sunlight. “That depends. What’s your super power?”

“Okay, first question, what’s my superpower?”

“Hmm. Fitting into very small spaces? Like the tiny guy, you know? Uh, Ant-Man!”

“I’m not even that short!”

“Louis, come back,” Harry reaches after Louis as she careens away over the old wooden boards. “I’m kidding,” she’s grinning, looking decidedly unapologetic, but Louis allows herself to be collected and tucked beneath Harry’s arm once more. “How about this, everyone likes you.”

“What? How is that a superpower? Harry, you suck at this game.”

“No, no, listen,” Harry says, prodding Louis’ ribs to punctuate her words. “You’re effortlessly charming. You can get away with anything because you’re so affable and lovely. Whenever you speak, people stop to listen, and you draw them in.”

“I think you’re thinking of yourself, mate.”

“No, no—”

“You’re the most effortlessly charming person I have ever met. You can be my sidekick, I guess.” Louis says, as if she’s generously giving in to something, “The Lovable Lady. And my super power is I don’t need anything. I can adapt to any environment because I have evolved to be supremely independent of all needs and wants.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Harry says. But they’ve reached the end of the pier, and caught up with Liam and Zayn. 

Niall catches up a few seconds later, and the all clamor down into the boat, and to the rail to look out as the boat eases away from its mooring and toward the horizon. 

Of course it’s beautiful, shockingly, stunningly, wordlessly so. And of course it’s even more beautiful with Harry beside her, leaning against the rail and pointing down into the aquamarine water, vibrant with delight, her hair tossed around her head by the ocean breeze.

It’s almost as if it is just the two of them. Liam and Zayn trail toward the other end of the boat, Niall golden and bubbly between them, and Harry and Louis are left together, not quite touching. It’s not the same though, the morning’s easy air, shared space and shared touches has come under a cloud.

“This is weird, isn’t it?” Louis says, stumbling toward something real. For a second she thinks Harry is going to turn to her, fall into her arms, and everything will miraculously be okay.

Harry bites her lower lip, stares into the sea and says, “Look, sea turtle.”

Louis looks. Whatever Niall might say, it’s Louis who can never say no to Harry, not the other way round. 

“Hey, what do you call a drunk turtle?”

“Harry Styles’ speech patterns?”

Harry giggles, “A lager-head.”

Louis covers her face with her hands, because what else is there to do? “Never speak, please.”

“But I thought you liked my voice?”

Louis inhales sharply, “Not at all. Much too slow, and horribly wasted on bad jokes.”

A thread of silence wends its way around them. “Can we go down and look through the floor?”

“What?” Louis leans in and taps the space between Harry’s eyes, “You got x-ray vision now? Is that your super power? Because if it is you have to give up the charming rap.”

“Weren’t you paying attention?

To what? Louis wants to say. What could be worth my attention more than you? “Never been great at paying attention,” she says instead.

Harry grabs her hand. “C’mere,”

Their footsteps are a riot of sound against the narrow steps as they go downstairs to the heart of the boat. In the middle of the floor, when they reach the lower room, is what looks like nothing less than a giant hole straight to the ocean, until a little girl reaches out and presses her hand against the glass. 

Harry tugs Louis forward. They lean in and watch glorious forests of coral and anemones pass below them. “I’m keeping the charm as my superpower.” Harry tells Louis, “and I’m staying right here, by your side.”

Louis’ heart swells. “Yeah?”

Harry keeps staring down at the glass. “Maybe I’ll even cure you of that lack of wanting.”

I have been irrevocably broken of any ability I ever had to not want, Louis thinks. “Good luck,” she says to Harry, teasing, “I’m feeling pretty steady.”

Harry matches Louis’ teasing tone. “Isn’t the trope that superheroes always fall for their sidekick?”

Louis is fallen, falling, she doesn’t think she’ll ever stop falling. She wants to say something, but instead she leans up against Harry as they watch the brilliance of the otherworldly ocean floor.

…

In some desperate bid for off-the-cuff normality Louis agrees to go out that night. 

It’s a tawdry display. Four girls with too many unsaid words knocking about in the air between them, and Niall, a shining outlier, not a care in the world. Maybe there’s something to this luck of the Irish thing, after all. 

It’s alright, though, the place they go is lit up warm and golden, and mostly full of young people on their first pint of the night. Laughter arcs up to the ceiling and casts the benevolent glow of happiness down on all who walk in the doors.

Harry and Louis hold hands, and everything is effortless. The barmaid gives Louis free drinks, and they go back the table Harry nudges Louis and says, “She totally thought you were fit. I bet you could get her number,” and when Louis snorts at that there’s nothing awkward about it, just friends having a laugh.

This is how it should have been from the very first, and how it would have been from the very first if they just understood what the other wanted. At least, now, the cards are on the table. After a while Louis says, “Hey, I’m sorry we had kind of a miscommunication.”

Harry leans into her all the way. “I’m just glad we’re on the same page. It would be so awkward if you liked me, right?”

“Yeah,” Louis’ laughter sounds forced. “Awkward.”

As she puts her arm around Harry she thinks, what the fuck am I doing? This is what she gets for trying to be all vague and dramatic. Louis should know better than to ever, ever look at what people have to say about her online. They all have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to catch the plane that will carry them across Australia and to Louis' next event, but Louis doesn't care how little sleep she gets, or how tired she is in the morning. She has to make this right.

At least she hasn’t lost Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is always appreciated.  
> Next chapter will be out maybe tomorrow, maybe! I'm more than halfway done, so we'll see.  
> Thank you for reading, let me know what you think!


	14. Chapter 14

At midnight they leave, Liam herding them into a taxi despite their slurred protestations. “You’ll all hate yourself in the morning,” she tells them, “if you have a hangover and three hours of sleep before catching the plane. It’s okay, you can thank me later.”

It takes Louis several tries to fit her keycard into the door of the hotel room, and it doesn’t help that Harry is clinging to her back and giggling uncontrollably.

The balcony beckons in the moonlight, and even though both of them are definitely drunk, maybe because they’re drunk, it seems like a good idea to sit outside and share the bottle of champagne they still have in the mini-fridge.

“We have to get up in five hours,” Harry points out, somehow tripping on a sock on her way to sweep aside the billowing white curtain and throw open the balcony doors. She leans there for a second, moonlight catching on her face, and adds tragically, “we haven’t even packed,”

“We make a very dangerous team,” Louis holds up the bottle in a victorious toast, “Let’s go.”

Naturally the champagne overflows the sides of its narrow neck when Louis pops out the cork, and splatters into a foamy white puddle on the balcony floor. Harry takes off her shirt to mop up the spill, because it’s way too much work to go back inside just for a towel, and because Harry is always looking for an excuse to get undressed anyway.

“You’re a horrible influence on me,” Louis says, not that that really makes sense. She goes to the edge and leans over to feel the wind on her face. Her skin feels feverish. 

Harry is a sibilant goddess in a dark purple bra, loose limbs hanging over the edge of her chair, wrapping her lips around the champagne bottle in a way that makes Louis tremble all over. 

“Did you really mean it?” Louis asks, all the alcohol in her bloodstream making her daring, “About not caring about,” she jerks her head, unwilling to say his name, “me and him?”

Harry’s eyes snap to hers. “Oh for god’s sake, Louis,” And then Harry’s standing up, crowding forward, and Louis’ back slams painfully into the railing and they’re kissing, messy, voracious, all hot and wet, and Louis’ teeth scraping against Harry’s lower lip.

Louis makes a noise in the back of her throat, surprise, or pleasure, and Harry jerks away like she’s been shocked. She brings the back of her wrist to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Lou—”

Louis reaches for her, “Shut the fuck up, oh my god, do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do that?”

She catches Harry’s breathless laugh with her mouth, and as their lips make contact Harry says, “Probably not as long as I’ve been wanting—”

She’s distracting from finishing by Louis sticking her tongue down her throat. Now that Louis has this she doesn’t know what to do. She wants to touch all of Harry at once; the intriguing tangle of her hair, the soft skin over her hips, her unnaturally long legs, and her constantly on show tits. Harry moans softly when Louis’ fingers trail over her lower stomach.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Louis asks, “When I had you all laid out across the bed?”

“Is this the time for talking?” Harry says digging her nails into Louis’ arse. 

Louis can kind of see her point. Still, she can’t help but say, “You like it though, don’t you? Getting held down like that? Helpless?” She bites back a gasp when Harry slides her hand up Louis’ shirt.

Harry’s voice is ragged, “Whatever you want,”

Louis leans back to look at Harry. Her pupils are huge, her mouth red and slick. “So this is what’s been hiding under all that cocky charm.” Heat is building in the meeting of her thighs, “God, you look wrecked.”

Harry bites at her bottom lip until it goes white, so hard it must hurt. “Bed.” She says. 

It takes Louis a second to figure out what she means, her brain is working at a clunking rate, lust and vodka are making everything except Harry seem swimmy and unimportant. “Why, Harry,” she says at last, “I never took you for a romantic.”

“I’ve been waiting for this for three and a half weeks. I’m doing it proper,” Despite her words she slides her thigh in between Louis’ until Louis grabs her hips and pulls her forward capturing Harry’s mouth in a kiss that’s all gasp and nothing more, Louis shaken into motionlessness as Harry rocks forward, a shallow rhythm against Louis. 

“Harry,” Louis warns.

“Yeah,” Harry says against the side of Louis’ jaw, “Oh, god,”

They stumble blindly toward the door. The patio table makes an awful scraping noise and skids back several inches when Harry knocks into it. Louis hooks her fingers into Harry’s waistband and tugs lightly until Harry pushes her hand away. “You first,” She says, “I want,” a deep shuddery breath, “I want to taste you.”

They make it all the way to the balcony door, and then Harry presses Louis into the glass, licks into her mouth, and says—her voice a serrated blade going straight into Louis heart—“God, you’re fucking gorgeous,”

Louis puts a hand against the glass behind her, trying to find something to hold her up because her knees, god it’s such a fucking cliché, her knees are going weak. “Harry,” she says, starting to say something else, and then Harry drops to her knees and Louis’ train of thought goes crashing off the rails.

“Change your mind about doing it right?” Louis asks just to be a shit.

Harry looks up at Louis. She’s absurdly beautiful. Slowly she slides the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. Her eyes are dark and dangerous. “I don’t have to do it at all if you don’t want.” 

“No one likes a tease.”

Harry just grins and undoes the button on Louis jeans. She yanks them down around Louis’ ankles and then dips her fingers under the waistband of Louis’ black lace underwear.

“Harry, get your mouth on me or I swear to fucking god…”

Harry closes her eyes. “Fuck,” she mumbles, and then she’s tugging the underwear down, pressing her thumb into the dip under Louis’ hip bone, and leaning in.

Louis jerks her head back when Harry licks into her, and her head slams into the glass behind her. “Shit, Harry,”

It’s a good thing Harry has her hand on Louis hip, because it’s the only thing preventing Louis from sliding down the door. Harry’s thumb is probably going to leave a bruise, she’s pressing so hard, but Louis doesn’t care.

Harry’s moving her tongue tantalizingly slow, licking up into Louis’ slit. It’s taking all of Louis’s concentration not to grind down. “Fuck me like you mean it, goddamn,” Louis says.

Harry tilts her head back and looks up at Louis. She actually licks her lips, with a filthy smirk on her face. “Sure, babe,”

Louis just has enough time to think, fuck, before her mind whites out as Harry slides two fingers inside her, parting the folds of her cunt, and at the same time leans in, gives Louis a little kiss at the crease of her thigh, and then presses that sinful mouth of hers to Louis’ clit.

Louis digs one hand into Harry’s thick hair to steady herself as Harry swirls her tongue around Louis’ achingly sensitive clit, and crooks her fingers just right. It’s too much, and so good it leaves Louis panting into empty air. She’s so wet, she can feel it in how easily Harry’s fingers slide against her.

“Good,” Louis mumbles, pointlessly, “you’re so good,” and that’s it, Harry twists her fingers roughly, sucks at Louis’ clit, and she comes, her brain going gloriously blank with the white hot pleasure searing through her.

Finally she slides down the wall into Harry’s arms, for a minute the only sound is the two of them trying desperately to catch their breath and then Louis says, into the curve of Harry’s neck. “Jesus Christ.”

“I think he was celibate actually.” Harry says solemnly. “I was going to make a ‘Yes, my child,’ joke, but that might be a cardinal sin considering the context.”

“I think what we just did is a cardinal sin,”

Harry, unbelievably, sounds quite ready for a debate, “Technically, I’m not sure if woman can be cardinals, so it can’t be a cardinal sin.”

Louis stares at Harry. Her brain is still hazily replaying the feeling of Harry’s fingers inside her. “A cardinal sin isn’t a sin committed by a cardinal, is it?”

After a moment Harry starts to laugh, “I can’t believe,” she says, gasping, “that we’re having a discussion about theology after I just had my fingers in your vagina.”

Louis puts her hands on either side of Harry’s face and pulls her into a kiss, “You taste like sex,” Louis says.

“Your fault,” Harry says, “your cunt,”

“Mmm,” Louis leans in again and they topple backwards. Louis looks down at Harry, and brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Your turn.” She presses another swift kiss to Harry’s parted lips. She staggers to her feet, legs still wobbly, and offers Harry a hand.

Harry stares at it like it’s a foreign object. “Bed,” Louis says, pulling Harry to her feet, she tugs her in for a bruising kiss. “You may not have any patience, but I do,”

“You’re the one who came in record time,” Harry pouts.

“I bet I can make you last longer,” Louis whispers.

Harry’s eyelashes flutter.

Just inside the doors Louis stops to kiss Harry senseless and dispense her of her bra. “Shit, I love how responsive you are,” she murmurs, pressing her mouth to Harry’s dusky pink nipple and feeling it stiffen under her touch.

They don’t make it to their bed, but instead Louis pushes Harry onto the other bed, the one nearer the balcony doors.

There’s a pause while Louis noses at the side of Harry’s neck, inhaling the scent of her perfume, and pretending that’s not what she’s doing. It feels somehow too intimate, learning Harry’s scent, which is a silly thing to worry about, considering what they’re doing. She finds the place where the faint sweet smell is strongest and bites into it until Harry makes a low, broken sound, nails digging into Louis’ back. Louis licks over the place like she’s healing a wound, gives it another graze of her teeth, and then nips and sucks at it until she’s satisfied. “That’ll leave a mark.” She says, pressing her thumb into the reddish darkness that blooming there.

Harry whimpers. Her eyes are glassy. “Louis, please,”

Louis likes to tease, but the fact is she’s stalling. Now that she has Harry’s body under her, all at once lush and lean, she doesn’t know what to do. She wants to do everything to Harry, wants to learn Harry’s body, wants to learn all of the secret places that will make Harry squirm with pleasure.

She leans down to press her lips to the fern tattoos along Harry’s hips. Carefully she bites at the first leaf until it’s purpling under her mouth, and then moves on to nip at the next. It takes a long time, especially with the way Harry’s wriggling, and Louis has to keep stopping to tell her to hold still, until finally she straddles her and pins down her hips, but Louis marks every leaf dark red. The sounds Harry keeps making are more erotic than having any other woman under her has ever been. 

“There,” she says with satisfaction, panting, “I’ve been wanting to do that since our first night here. You paraded around naked, and you were so pretty I nearly pinned you to the wall and ate you out then and there.”

Harry’s chest is rising and falling rapidly. She clears her throat several times before saying, rather dazedly, “I had to get your attention somehow.”

Louis promised to make Harry last, but , she thinks with a gleam of hope, next time, later. Instead she raises herself on one elbow and kisses Harry. “You’re so fucking pretty like this,” Louis says, “Just... panting for it.”

Harry digs her nails into the small of Louis’ back. “Don’t make me beg,” she says, sounding like she’s begging even as she says the words.

Louis has to blink that image away. “Not this time,” she promises. And finally she lets herself slide her hand down over Harry’s smooth stomach and between her legs. She’s soaking wet, Louis doesn’t even have to prep her, just slips three fingers into her slit and works until Harry’s arching her back and gasping, hands looking for purchase in the sheets.

“Louis? I want to...”

“Yeah.” Louis murmurs, stroking faster, rougher, “Okay.”

That’s all it takes. Harry comes with a low cry in the back of her throat, clenching down on Louis’ fingers. “Fuck.” She says, “Louis.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Louis wipes her hand on the bedspread and listens to Harry’s heartbeat slow from its frantic pace. 

“Well, I can’t believe how well that worked.” Harry shifts slightly, but only to adjust the angle Louis is laying on top of her.

“How well what worked?”

“Kissing you. I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier.”

“You’re such a shit,” Louis says, hating how fond she sounds.

“Ooh, talk dirty to me.”

Louis pinches Harry’s arm in retaliation, but Harry just sighs contentedly.

They don’t bother moving—what would be the point?—and fall asleep wrapped up in each other’s arms.

Louis has one bleary thought that maybe she should say something, what, she isn’t sure, just to check in with Harry, but she’s tired and the thought slips away, as she falls asleep.

….

When Louis wakes up Harry’s gone.

It’s exactly like every shitty movie Louis has ever seen. She reaches a hand across the bed for Harry before she even opens her eyes, and when her fingers only meet a cold expanse of sheet she sits up in sudden terror, looking around her. “Harry?” she calls.

Of course there’s no response. Louis gets up and searches anyway, throwing open the bathroom door, checking behind the shower curtain, dragging herself across the room to look on the balcony. Finally Louis finds enough sense to look in the closet and sees that all of Harry’s things are gone. Harry left.

Louis moved too fast, and Harry left.

The only thing she left is her t-shirt from last night, still puddled on the balcony and damp with champagne. 

Louis refuses to be the girl who curls around left behind scraps and cries, but she does cram the shirt into the middle of her bag when she packs, with stiff jerky movements. 

…

“Harry’s gone.” Louis says.

Liam looks up from organizing a pile of luggage. “What?”

Hollowly, Louis repeats herself.

“Oh, babe,” Liam kicks aside a duffle bag and goes to Louis, pulling her in for a hug.

“I fucked up, Li,”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault. What did she say?”

“What?”

Liam looks Louis in the eyes. “What did she say to you when she left?”

“She didn’t say anything. She was gone when I woke up.”

“Shit,” Liam whispers, so quiet Louis’ sure it wasn’t meant for her ears. And then, reasonably, “Did you try calling her?”

“No. Liam, she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Okay, well, look, we can figure this out later. Right now we have to get to the airport. Okay, Lou?”

“Yeah,” Louis says.

Louis has an undeniable sense of déjà vu as they walk into the airport while the sun reaches long golden rays into the sky behind them, but this time no one holds Louis’ hand and tells her she’s going to be fine, and the seat next to her on the plane is empty.

…

Zayn disappears in the direction of the ocean with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, as soon as they’ve settled the bags into the cabin they’ve rented for this leg of the trip. Louis longs to follow her, her body feels twitchy with the need for a cigarette, but Liam and Niall close in on her like well meaning, but irritating maiden aunts.

Louis obliges them with a brief summary of events leading up to Harry’s disappearing act.

“You told her to Google you?” Liam repeats, “Why would you do that, you fucking wanker? Have you checked recently? Yeah, there’s one story with a really cure picture of you and Harry, but there are about forty seven stories on you and Arthur and your cutesy little ice cream date. She thinks you’re trying to let her down easy. ‘Look, Harry, this is how I spent my day and this is how I intend to keep spending my days.’ It’s like sending her a flashing message that says, You have no place in my life.”

“That’s really obscure. You don’t think that’s really what she thinks, do you?”

“I don’t know but that’s what I would think if Zayn was like. ‘Look at these pictures of me on a date with another guy.’”

“I guess. Shit.”

“You can still fix it so easily. Like, just fucking talk to her. Come on, Louis.” This is Niall, as always the voice of blunt reason.

Louis rolls her eyes. “There’s nothing to fix, Niall, there’s nothing broken. It’s just the way things are. And it doesn’t matter anyway, okay? She told me she doesn’t want a relationship, and we slept together, and she clearly rejected me. If she wanted that to be the start of something she would have stayed.”

“Louis, you—”

“Don’t. She’s the one who left, Niall. She’s the one who fucking left.”

Niall opens her mouth but Louis shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She says, and she goes after Zayn.

“Sorry,” Zayn says as she lights Louis’ cigarette. “She’s just…” but apparently she’s unable to say exactly what Harry is, because she just shakes her head and exhales a ribbon of smoke.

Louis nods. “I know.” 

She lets the nicotine sear her throat, and stares at the reflection of the sun on the water, even though it hurts her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's before midnight, so technically I kept my promise.


	15. Chapter 15

Louis feels like someone has reached inside her and neatly scooped out her organs with a spoon, leaving her empty and incapable of emotion. On the bright side she’s doing remarkably well in the competition.

On the less bright side there’s been no word from Harry. She doesn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge but empirical evidence doesn’t lie.

Louis knows Zayn and Niall have talked to her, because Liam mentioned that Niall had said Harry went home to England, (“Great,” Louis said, “I ran her half a world away,”) and because Zayn keeps walking out of the room to answer her phone when it rings, and Louis can definitely hear her saying, “Hey, Hazza,” as the door shuts behind her.

It doesn’t matter though, Louis is over wanting what she can’t have. Surfing is all that matters, and honestly Louis can’t believe she let herself get so distracted

“You can love surfing all you want, but it’s not going to hold you when you fall asleep.” Zayn tells her.

It also won’t up and leave Louis in the middle of the night with nothing but a t-shirt and a thumb shaped bruise to remember it by. 

It’s a long week in Victoria. Louis makes it to the quarterfinals but not beyond. 

It leaves her with a week free before she has to fly to Rio for the third CT, and that leaves her with way to much free time. 

Maybe Louis isn’t done being distracted.

She sneaks Harry’s home address out of Zayn’s phone, which feels a little stalkerish and creepy even while she does it, but it’s not like she can just ask for it. 

She leaves a note on the kitchen table. It tells where she’s going, but implies that she’s going to visit her family. It’s not even a lie, because she does want to see her mum and sisters.

…

Holmes Chapel is a picturesque little town. Actually it has no right being so lovely. Harry’s door is opened by a lovely girl with bleached blonde hair who looks at Louis for a long time with her mouth slightly open and then says “Louis Tomlinson, you great blistering bitch.”

“Uh,” says Louis, “Is Harry here?”

The girl must be Harry’s older sister, she looks too like her to be anything else. “Yeah,” she says, “I don’t think she wants to see you, mate.”

She’s the one who left, Louis wants to scream, she’s the one who bloody left so why does everyone keep treating me like scum? “Can you maybe let her decide that?” Louis says.

Gemma glares at Louis for a long minute and then slams the door in her face.

She’s gone so long Louis almost thinks she’s not coming back. When the door does open it’s not Gemma, but Harry who tumbles out and almost pitches straight into Louis’ arms. She rights herself hurriedly, taking a step back from Louis and brushing her hair back with one hand. “Louis.” She says, shutting the door behind her, “I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

Louis’ chest aches at the sight of her.

“Why does your sister think I’m evil incarnate?” Louis says.

Harry glances uneasily at the closed front door. “Yeah,” she says, even slower than normal, “Weird. No idea,” 

“Harry?”

“She’s my older sister, you know? She thinks it’s her job to protect me from…”

“From girls who hurt you.” Louis finishes. 

Harry presses her fingers against her lips and looks away. 

Louis swallows around the lump in her throat. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Louis. But I can’t—I have to go.” Harry steps back and turns away, reaching for the doorknob. 

“Harry, wait,” Harry stops with one foot through the door, her hair hanging down and veiling her face. She doesn’t turn. “Can I text you?”

“Okay,” Harry says, so softly Louis isn’t sure she didn’t imagine it, and then the door slams shut. 

…

Embarrassingly Louis cries that night for the first time since this started. Her mom wraps her in a hug and pets her hair, whispering meaningless words of comfort. 

“Sorry,” Louis mumbles, sitting back and rubbing at her eyes.

“What are moms for?” Jay says, “What’s going on, love? Do you want to talk to me?” Louis looks down and takes a shaky breath, and Jay pats her knee and says, “I’ll get you a cup of tea, yeah?”

Louis nods, and Jay leaves. When she comes back with a steaming mug, Louis has regrouped and rubbed the smudges of mascara away from under her eyes. She takes a long swallow of tea and then says, “I met a girl,” she laughs, “that’s how all these stories start, right? ‘I met a girl and she put stars in the sky.’”

Jay nods. “Women. Can’t live with ‘em and you can’t live without ‘em.”

Louis laughs shakily. “It’s my fault.”

Jay nods, “Well statement still holds true, I guess.”

Louis lets herself be comforted. Even if she doesn't deserve it, right now she needs desperately to be held by someone who will never disappear on her with no warning.

Predictably Louis has lots of text messages when she turns her phone on before getting ready for bed.

 _Where the fuck??_ –Niall 

_say hi to harry for me u shit_ –Liam

 _you ok?_ –Niall 

_yuo ok?_ –Liam 

_Harry said you stopped by… Are you ok?_ –Zayn 

She sends a group text out, _I’m fine! Sorry I didn’t say anything, just came home to visit the family._

Then she sits on the bed and opens her messages to Harry. She types out, _I’m sorry. Can we talk? Xx._ And then erases the _x_ s and adds, _I fucked up, I miss you so much_. She stares at that for a minute and then erases the whole thing and throws her phone on the floor.

When she comes back from brushing her teeth she has two new messages.

 _Liar_ –Niall 

And 

_Hey_ –Harry 

She responds to Niall with simply a selfie of her in her bedroom, still with its old Man U posters.

Then she swipes to Harry's message and responds with shaking hands. _I’m sorry._

Her reply comes a few seconds later. _It’s okay._

_It’s not, Jesus. You’re such a fucking masochist._

Louis waits, staring at the screen. It must only be a minute or so but it feels like at least five before the phone lights up again. _Oops…_

Is that… a joke? _I’m serious, Haz_

_So am I ;)_

Louis sits there for a second her thumbs hovering over the keyboard struggling with the impulse to take the easy out. As she stares at the screen her phone buzzes with the arrival of two new messages.

 _Zayn told us you visited Harry_ –Liam 

_Was she pissed?_ –Niall

She swipes those away. Finally she says to Harry, _Yeah, I remember_ , and then quickly, before Harry can respond to that, _I was a piece of shit and I’m sorry, will you come back?_

_I understand. It’s okay._

_Will you come with us? Rio is in a week._

_I think I need a break…_

_Rio de Janeiro, Haz. Copacabana. Christ the Redeemer._ After a second, not sure it’s what Harry would consider a good thing, Louis adds, _me_ , and hits send.

It takes forever but Harry responds, _I’ll think about it._

Louis goes to sleep feeling cautiously hopeful.

Which is pretty stupid. Harry texts her the next day when she’s in town and says, _sorry, I can’t._

 _We don’t have to be anything but friends_ , Louis types out, and then sends it quickly before she loses her nerve. She regrets it immediately and spends the next four minutes berating herself until her phone buzzes and she sees Harry’s response.

 _Maybe that’s not what I want._

The bump, bump of Louis’ heart doesn’t feel like anything but panic even though the logical part of her heart is saying this is the moment in the story where everything changes.

Louis texts back, _please think again about coming to Brazil_. She calls Liam next. No one picks up, so she leaves a message, “Hey, I just wanted to check in about Brazil plans. Call me when you get a chance. Love you, babe.”

In a low voice someone behind her says, “dyke.”

Slowly Louis turns to face him. He’s middle aged and pale, all his features coming together close at the front of his face, right over his snarl of teeth.

“Excuse me?” she says.

His eyes twitch nervously. “Calling your girlfriend?” Somebody laughs and Snarl Tooth gains confidence, looking round him at spectators in a chummy sort of way. “You can’t fool me, I know a bushwhacker when I sees one.”

“Fuck you, mate.”

“Yeah?” he puts a hand to the crotch of his pants, “You think that’d cure you?”

In the background Louis is vaguely aware of the click of a shutter. Several other people have taken out their phones and appear to filming. 

“Listen,” Louis says, “Just because you’re so bloody ugly no man would ever look twice at you is no reason to get angry at me.”

“What’d you say to me?” he takes a threatening step forward.

Louis resists the impulse to step back. She sneers at him. “Tell me, is it hard to suck dick with your teeth all fucked up like that?”

In the street a police a car is slowing to a crawl as it passes them. The man points at her, “Fucking dyke bitch,”

Louis doesn’t notice the police car, or that the clicking of shutters has increased. She takes one step forward and slams her fist into the side of his head.

Suddenly there are cameras everywhere. It’s like a feeding frenzy, a pack of sharks drawn by the smell of blood. 

The man doesn’t press charges. He seems very eager to escape the area, especially when a few voices from the crowd insist Louis was in the right.

It’s still basically a sea of cluster-fuck. Louis isn’t so good with metaphorical seas. She ignores the two people who ask for her autograph and makes a dash for her car.

Once there she calls Richard. He picks up after two rings, “What the hell is up with your disappearing act—”

Louis interrupts him. “Just because I’m a bitch, don’t think that means you can leash me.”

“I’m your manager, I’m trying to manage you.”

“What you are is an asshole, and frankly, you’re a shining example, but that’s not why I called you.”

“Why did you call me?”

Louis wraps her hand around the steering wheel and grips hard. There’s a lingering ache in her middle knuckle and it hurts as it stretches. “I wanted to ask you a question.” She says, “What happened to you that made you hate the media so much?”

There’s silence for a couple seconds and then Richard says, “Excuse me?”

“I noticed how much you hate the media, and I’m assuming it’s because at some point they dragged you bodily through the mud.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

“Fine, consider this. How much difference would it have made if someone stood by your side against them?”

“Louis—” Richard warns.

“I want to come out.”

There’s a very long pause. “What does a heart attack feel like?” Richard says at last, “Because I’m pretty sure I just had one.”

“What’s the point of me staying in the closet?” Louis says, “I’m serious, what’s the logical point? Am I gonna surf better?”

“Public opinion—” Richard begins.

“Oh fuck off, I know all about public opinion.”

“Think long and hard about this, Louis,” Richard says darkly.

“You can shove long and hard up your ass,” Louis mutters as she hangs up.

There’s a tap on her window. She looks up. “Louis!” someone shouts through the glass, “Why did you hit him?”

Louis yanks the gearshift into neutral and revs the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is pretty late. Not that I ever promised a schedule. Anyway, school's starting so it'll be a little bit of a wait until the next one but we're almost to the end!  
> Thanks for reading <3


	16. Chapter 16

It turns out punching a homophobe is great publicity. Louis should do it more often.

Or at least, it’s great publicity if you believe the saying that all press is good press. One memorable headline reads “Louis Tomlinson Assaults Bystander: Denies Gay Rumors”

Louis has taken a well-deserved break from the internet to avoid the fallout, but she honestly doesn’t mind. Small scabs have formed over her knuckles and Louis, for the first time in a long time, doesn’t feel like she wants to crawl out of her own skin.

On the phone she tells Liam about the waitress with the rainbow bracelet in Australia. She also mentions her call to Richard. Liam doesn’t ask her any questions, she just hums understandingly. They agree to meet at the airport in Rio. They can get flights that arrive within an hour of each other. Niall steals the phone next so she can gleefully congratulate Louis on her public display of violence. 

Louis doesn’t ask if any of them have heard from Harry. Louis has told Harry what she wants, it’s up to Harry to make the next move. She can’t stop herself from thinking about Harry, but she can at least pretend to the rest of the world that she isn’t pining over a girl she wasn’t brave enough to love when she had her.

Louis also has taken a well-deserved break from the outside world. Other than that phone call Louis hasn’t talked to anyone except her mum and sisters in days. Richard has called a record seventeen times but she’s let him go to voicemail.

“I feel quite zen, actually. I reckon this is what Buddha was on about, and all, you know?” Louis says. Charlotte manages to look skeptical, bored, and disgusted all at once. Louis agrees, but she’s keeps talking anyway, “I mean if I don’t talk to anyone they can’t ask me for shite. I don’t owe anyone anything. I’m one with nature and all that. I’ve let go of bodily desires and material goods.”

Charlotte turns the volume on the TV up and mumbles, “Sod off.”

“What did you say to me?”

Charlotte rolls her eyes, and turns to face Louis. “If being ‘zen’ and ‘one with nature’ and all that shite is what’s making you mope around the house all day drinking endless cups of tea and eating stale crisps then I think it’s all a load of bollocks.”

Louis doesn’t fancy getting into a fight with one of the very few people she’s speaking to, so she stops speaking to her and keeps mostly to her room, binge watching Orange is the New Black and not making eye contact with her mum when she comes in to bring her toast and cups of tea.

She gets away with two days of this before Félicité visits her room and says, “Charlotte says to tell you you’re a twat.”

“Oh is that what she said.” Louis doesn’t look away from her screen. She likes being the picture of disinterest.

“Actually she said you were a motherfucking twat but I don’t think I’m supposed to say the fuck word.”

Louis finally looks up to where her sister is standing in the doorway, hanging off the doorknob. She heaves a sigh and shuts her laptop. “It’ll be our secret.”

Noting the opening up of Louis’ demeanor, Félicité sways forward hopefully. Louis pushes her laptop out of the way and makes a face as her sister bounces forward, beaming, to climb on Louis’ bed. “She’s right you know,” Félicité says, “you’re being a right wanker.” 

“I know.” Louis says, because she does know.

Felicite looks at Louis with large guileless eyes. “What’s wrong? D’you want to talk about it?”

It’s stupid really, because she’s basically just a kid, but Louis finds she does want to talk about it. No one else has really asked, is the thing.

“You know Harry?”

Félicité shakes her head, and Louis almost laughs, because she forgot, in the haze of all this drama, that Harry’s just an ordinary person, and that a few weeks ago no one would have bothered sending pictures of her to the paparazzi because she was just a random girl with a summer job serving ice cream to spoiled brats in Oahu. 

“You’ve seen pictures of me with a tall girl with brown curly hair, yeah?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.” 

Louis shrugs. It doesn’t matter. “Anyway, Harry and me, we sort of had a thing—”

Félicité interrupts, “You sort of had a thing? You can’t sort of have a thing, either you have a thing or you don’t.”

“Well, that was the problem, we didn’t have a thing, but we also did have a thing, and like you say, that doesn’t work so well. Maybe we could have been a thing, but stupid shit kept coming up that kept us apart.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like first my agent told me I wasn’t allowed to be gay because the public wouldn’t like it, and like the dumb sack of shit I am, I listened to him and I didn’t let myself look at her because at the time I needed surfing more than I needed her. And then Arthur,” Louis rolls her eyes, “so she thought I was straight, but then I came out to her. Basically we just never talked about it.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, god, Fizzy, I don’t know, because I’m a dumb bitch.” 

“No,” Félicité scoots forward and puts her hand over Louis’, “don’t say that. You were just scared.”

“Same thing, basically.”

“So talk to her now.”

Louis pulls her hand away. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“We had sex. We had sex, and then she left, and—I don’t know—if that wasn’t a clear enough message… she didn’t pick me, Fizz. So all that’s left is mending our friendship.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“God, Fizz, did you just come in here to insult me?”

“Here’s what I’m hearing you say. You never actually told her you loved her, you just expected her to magically assume that from the way you acted around her even though you told me yourself you were careful not to act gay because your manager thinks the public won’t approve, and then she left and you think that some kind of rejection? How can she reject you if you never fucking asked her to take a chance on you?”

Louis opens her mouth and closes it. “Well, I went to her house and asked her in person to come to Rio with me, and she said she couldn’t.”

“Did you say, Hello, Harry, I’m in love with you and I want nothing more than for you to come with me to Rio and also spend every day of the rest of your life in my arms?”

Louis rolls her eyes. “No. Come on, that’s fucking gay.”

“ _You’re_ gay, Louis! You _arse!_ ” And with that she gets up and flounces out of the room.

“What, you’re mad at me now too?” Louis shouts after her, “Tell me how exactly this is fair. I’m the one with a broken heart!”

Louis’ bedroom door slamming is the only answer. Louis pulls the covers up over her head and doesn’t think about Harry.

She doesn’t about the dimples that press into her cheeks when she smiles.

She doesn’t think about the way she looked spread out under Louis, eyes bright and glittering.

Most of all she doesn’t think about how she feels when Harry makes her laugh, like for just a second the world has stopped spinning and it’s okay to breathe.

…

On Tuesday she gets on the plane for Rio. It feels strange doing it alone. Even before her injury, before Harry, Niall and Liam were always with her. Louis stares out the window at the listless drizzle falling towards the tarmac while the flight attendant points out the emergency exits and shows them how to operate the oxygen masks that will fall from overhead in the event of a crash. 

She’s seen it all before. Louis knows how to survive.

A voice advises everyone to put their tray tables into their locked and upright position. Louis never took her tray table out of its locked and upright position, so she doesn’t move.

And then the plane is moving, a hellish rumble coming up from the tires as they taxi down the runway. Louis has a niggling sense that she should feel set free, like she’s growing wings, like every step she takes toward the truth is another step toward the open sky. 

But it doesn’t feel like that at all. God, she’s so tired of being afraid. She’s so tired of stilted actions, and pulling back from her emotions, only honest when she’s not sober. 

She’s so tired of tiptoeing around herself. 

It’s a long flight. 

Louis is ready for things to start happening. She’s ready to start getting what she fucking wants.

She wakes up when the plane lands. Her head feels muzzy and she can’t remember what she dreamed about. One image sticks. A hand on her thigh and a gritty voice whispering, “I know what you want.”

Her brain is thick with the remembered smell of pussy and champagne.

She’s never fucking sleeping again.

…

She’s never fucking drinking again.

The number of times she’s woken up with a hangover in her life should be enough to guarantee that she remain ten feet away from all alcoholic beverages for the rest of her life. Too bad she’s a dumb emo bitch.

Her stomach rolls and she leans over the side of the bed just in time to empty her stomach, and then just hangs there dry heaving while her very organs try to expel themselves from her.

There’s a small click and Louis manages to raise her head enough to see Liam poking her head round the door. “Hullo, Lou.” She says, “I thought I heard you.”

Louis groans. “Fuck off.”

Liam comes in, because no one ever listens to Louis. “It’s because you didn’t throw up last night. It’s always worse in the morning if you don’t throw up.”

“No offense, Liam, but I really could not fucking care less.”

Liam tsks. “You’ve vomited all over the floor. You should care, you know, this is a pricey rental.”

“Why should it fucking matter, Richard pays for all this bullshit.”

Liam’s expression goes from slightly joking and concerned, to perfectly blank. “You don’t remember.”

It isn’t a question, so Louis doesn’t bother answering it. “Fuck, Li, don’t be all mysterious on my ass, I can’t handle it right now.”

“You’ve got vomit in your hair.” Liam says, “Why don’t you shower, and we’ll clean this up, eh?”

“What do I not remember, Liam?”

“Shower. You smell like stomach bile and other peoples sweat.”

Louis quite wants to shake Liam until she spills, but to be honest she doesn’t have the energy even for argument, so she drags herself out of bed into the bathroom, peels off the black slip she must’ve been wearing the night before, and turns on the shower as hot as it will go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!
> 
> Next (and maybe last) chapter coming soon.


End file.
